Aug OpEx breakdown | Weekly post

I strongly recommend rereading these two earlier posts of mine:

They remain completely relevant.

The equity market has entered a euphoric state, with call option volume exploding to historic highs. Although the market is pricing a relatively quiet week, the downside is underpriced, put skew is cheap due to VIX complacency, and this is typically when the odds of a vol squeeze start to rise. Behind the paywall, I will examine what the market is pricing for this week.
One of the main supportive flows right now — alongside the short squeeze and put decay buyback flow — is that the share buyback window is open, retail investors are buying again, NQ futures positioning has dropped to very low levels, and XLP has switched r/r to the upside.

Inflation is far from gone, and monetary conditions remain far too loose. Although core CPI printed 0.22%, core PPI is still elevated at 4.7%. Goods prices are rising again, software prices (driven by AI demand) have surged, and inflation in many services categories remains stuck above pre-pandemic levels. Supercore inflation is still running at 3.28%, creating a stalemate for the September rate decision.
Warsh, of course, wants to keep the long end elevated, and as I wrote earlier, this will produce a stagflationary and then recessionary environment. Deliberately elevated long-term yields will destroy the average small and medium-sized businesses, mortgage holders and industry much sooner than they can cool the tech sector’s AI investment boom. But that comes later — not now. Inflation has been left untreated and will not simply disappear.
The Fed’s policy rate remains below the Taylor rule. If the Fed stays on hold now, far more aggressive tightening will be required later.
The clash between the Fed and the market will not break inflation — it will break the labor market and the real economy, ultimately making the most drastic intervention inevitable.

Alma@alma271828

Let's talk about charm More and more often, I run into the question: "Alma, why do people keep saying that the charm effect is driving the market?" Well, my answer to that is, "I have no idea, probably gamma and vanna are broken records..."💁‍♀️ From a mathematical perspective,

10:49 PM · Aug 14, 2026 · 6.66K Views

6 Replies · 12 Reposts · 94 Likes

And now let’s analyse the priced-in probability distribution for OpEx week…