Intraday post (20/Aug)

Weekly post:

Here I broke down the SOQ, VIX-expo expected flows in details:

Alma@alma271828

As I promised, $VIX positioning data is rechecked... Somebody spent the final trading day buying 50,000 VIX puts at the 15 strike. Not last week, not as a ladder built patiently over a month — on the last day those options traded, into a settlement print that arrives this

Alma @alma271828

Briefly about the $VIX expiration... Technically, VIX options expire today, today is their last trading day. The underlying of the future is the 30-day forward variance, and that is replicated by the appropriate expiration SPX option strip, with a one over strike-squared

12:41 PM · Aug 19, 2026 · 2 Views

Take your time with it.

The Treasury is at least doubling the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations in long-dated nominal coupon securities (the 10–20yr and 20–30yr sectors). The current $2 billion maximum/operation will become at least $4 billion, from 9 Sept 2026 until the end of the refunding quarter (4 Nov), with further size details to be announced at the 4 Nov Quarterly Refunding.
The buybacks are financed by bill issuance: you sell at the front end (where $7.91 trillion of MMF assets sit as buyers) and buy at the back — net duration extraction from the market, yield-curve management without rate hikes. A pure piece of the financial-repression toolkit: the Fed sits at 3.50–3.75 with hawkish dissents, inflation is sticky, and the fiscal side is performing the duration management that monetary policy is not. They are pinning the nominal long-end with administrative tools; the relief valve remains inflation.

In this quarter a doubled official bid is now working against a supply-driven long-yield spike. The medium term, however, remains untouched — in fact, the very need to double the size precisely documents the selling pressure in my thesis; repression does not eliminate the problem, it merely shifts it into the inflation premium and into gold.
This is moderately risk-supportive for the weekly structure — it precisely cuts off that left tail in which a long-end supply scare would land in the Thursday–Friday –$2.2 billion short-gamma window.
The doubled long-end bid goes live on 9 September — one week before the 16 September node. The authorities are preparing for the same date the market is watching.
Not by chance. They see it too…

Alma@alma271828

#Bessent put again... actually? Treasury is at least doubling the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations in long-dated nominal coupon securities (the 10–20yr and 20–30yr sectors). The current $2 billion maximum per operation will become at least $4 billion, from 9 Sept

Alma @alma271828

As I promised, $VIX positioning data is rechecked... Somebody spent the final trading day buying 50,000 VIX puts at the 15 strike. Not last week, not as a ladder built patiently over a month — on the last day those options traded, into a settlement print that arrives this https://t.co/N1PQqxx9ig

1:14 PM · Aug 19, 2026 · 6.61K Views

2 Replies · 5 Reposts · 37 Likes

Meanwhile, the probability of a military incident in the Baltic region has risen to 15–20 percent over the next year, while the likelihood of the Middle Eastern war re-escalating this autumn is already above 35 percent. In practical terms, a global war is already being fought on one and a half fronts.
From a financial and market perspective, this means that beneath the seemingly calm surface the risk of a sudden collapse — the so-called left-tail risk — has swollen enormously. We are now sitting on two completely independent powder kegs — in the Baltics and in the Strait of Hormuz — either of which could trigger a global shock.

Let’s look at today’s positioning…