We’ve begun publishing our full catalogue of recorded webinars on The Option Strategist Substack — and we’ll be adding more in the coming weeks.
These are complete, in-depth strategy sessions taught by me, Lawrence G. McMillan, covering everything from core option mechanics to advanced strategy construction and risk management.
Paid Substack subscribers receive:
We’ve added another full-length educational webinar to The Option Strategist Substack library: Intermarket Spreads.
The January seasonal trade is usually one of our best seasonal trades (right behind the October seasonal). The trade is to buy $SPX at the close of the 18th trading day of the year, and exit at the close of trading four days later. Typically, large fund managers will put money to work at the beginning of the year (hence, the positive seasonality of the January early warning system), and then complete their buying at the end of the month.
This week saw $SPX make new all-time highs once again and even cross above 7,000 for the first time in history. Was that enough to generate a clear upside breakout? No! Normally, when new highs are made especially repeatedly as they have been since November there would be some strong follow-through to the upside. That has not been the case this time around.
We’ve just added a full-length webinar to The Option Strategist Substack: Trading Systems & Other Useful Applications.
This session focuses on rules-based trading systems and practical option applications designed to remove emotion from decision-making and enforce discipline through clearly defined entry, exit, and risk-management rules.
The put-call ratio is one of the most widely followed indicators in options trading — and one of the most misunderstood. When used correctly, it can provide powerful, contrary signals that anticipate turning points in stocks, indices, ETFs, and even futures markets.
In this webinar, we walk through how to properly calculate, interpret, and trade put-call ratios, using real market examples and a disciplined, model-based approach.
Now that January is here, the first of two “classic” January indicators is in place. That is the result of the first five trading days of January. Here are the relevant prices to date:
Date $SPX Closing Price
12/31/25 6845.20
1/8/26 (5th trading day) 6921.46
1/14/26 (9th trading day) 6926.60
1/15/26 (10th trading day) 6944.47
Earnings announcements, biotech news, and corporate events often create sharp price gaps and extreme option pricing distortions. In our latest write-up, we outline a practical framework for trading these event-driven situations using options — focusing on volatility, skew, and probability rather than headlines or speculation.
The post-Thanksgiving series of three seasonal trading periods has ended, and we are nearing the beginning of what is called the “January Defect,” when the market – and NASDAQ-100 ($NDX) stocks in particular, sell off. Following that, there is a strong seasonally bullish period at the end of January.
Recap of the Post-Thanksgiving Seasonals
The results were mixed for this year. On the day before Thanksgiving, November 26th 2025, these were the closing prices:
