Don here...
Bullish trades are costing 40-50% more than bearish ones in today's market.
That is not a typo.
I pulled up equivalent $4 wide spreads in SPY today. Same distance from the money. Same expiration. The call spread costs over a dollar more than the put spread.
The reason is skew. And right now, skew is sitting near record highs across 15 years of data.
Here is what is happening beneath the surface. Professional traders are buying puts and selling calls to finance them. That supply and demand dynamic has pushed the implied volatility on out-of-the-money puts to nearly 15, while out-of-the-money calls trade at just 10.
Most retail traders never look at this. They just buy call spreads and wonder why returns feel compressed.
The timing makes this particularly interesting:
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Three weeks of compression. The S&P has traded in a 100-point range since late November. The week started and closed at exactly the same level.
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VVIX at May lows. Professionals have unwound their hedges heading into the holidays, betting on quiet conditions through New Year's.
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Skew near 15-year highs. The differential between put and call implied volatility is at extreme levels.
When markets compress like this, they build pent-up aggression. Open interest keeps rolling forward. And when the range finally breaks, the move tends to be violent.
Meanwhile, the option market is misfiring in pockets most traders ignore:
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Silver has breached expected move four weeks in a row with nearly 1 million contracts trading daily.
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Caterpillar just posted three consecutive weeks of expected move breaches with no fundamental catalyst.
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KB Homes dropped 9% on earnings while the homebuilder sector barely flinched.
Next week brings just three and a half trading sessions with a $71 expected move. But once you look past the holidays, volatility pricing picks up quickly.
If you want to get bullish here, you need to understand why the conventional approach is working against you and what alternatives actually make sense in a record-skew environment.
Click here to watch me break down the exact spread comparisons and what this means for positioning into year-end
To your success,
Don Kaufman
Chief Market Strategist, TheoTRADE
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