TMAD Flow: “It’s Over”
$AAPL $MSFT $HOOD
Hi everyone,
Markets got hit hard last night after President Trump declared the Iran ceasefire “over” during the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. He told reporters, “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore,” and called Iranian leaders “scum.” The comments came as the U.S. launched fresh strikes on Iran, reigniting geopolitical tensions.
Oil jumped sharply. Both WTI and Brent futures rose about 8% yesterday morning and XLE saw huge call flow on our scanner days before as well. We wrote about this topic in our yesterday’s letter.
The surge pushed oil prices back to levels seen before the June 17 interim ceasefire agreement. Oil was the main reason equities failed to bounce, despite many recent attempts succeeding.
Traders are now back on full geopolitical watch. The so-called “ratchet effect”, where markets had been rewarding any positive peace talk while ignoring setbacks, finally broke down today. With clear backsliding and no offsetting good news, traders couldn’t shrug it off.
The big FOMC minutes release got completely overshadowed by the Iran news. But they delivered a clear message. 9 of the 18 participants who submitted rate projections expect at least one rate hike in 2026.
Inflation risks remain skewed to the upside. Tariffs, Middle East supply disruptions, and strong AI-driven demand are keeping price pressures elevated.
Several policymakers believe that additional rate hikes may be necessary if inflation stays stubborn while labor markets remain resilient. Officials are concerned that persistent inflation could become entrenched, influencing inflation expectations and future wage- and price-setting behavior. The easing bias has been removed. Future policy decisions will be data-dependent, with restoring price stability remaining the top priority.
This is not ideal for the market. Please go to TMAD App and see all indexes, and their GEX by Expiry and see how much put flow is going into summer and fall on all those.
IWM 0.00%↑ looking the worst as of now. Small caps are very sensitive to higher rates environment so be cautious. They’re already reacting to potential rate hikes. I’d stay away now.
DIA 0.00%↑ is still holding in there but we see unusual PUT SURGE and we’re now on a support so ideally we hold here. Otherwise we go lower towards $505.
SPY 0.00%↑ Also massive hedging into July and some into August. I have opened 740/700 put spreads for December. Small portion. Will add more shorter term put spreads perhaps today. Will keep you informed. Why such long expiry? I want enough time to hedge for the fall and close in October or November before theta kills me.
QQQ 0.00%↑ QQQ same story. Mixed bag going into the rest of the summer.
SPX Levels
SPX retested our level yesterday with precision. Always pay attention to the pre-market price action because market oftentimes retests the levels.
I look at SPY in premarket to get the feel for the price action. To calculate SPY levels from SPX use a simple formula:
SPX → SPY (SPX ÷ ~10.04)
As you can see here, we touched around $740 in pre-market and indeed retested this level later on in the day session.
You can trade SPY with options, (put options in this case), or if you’re more advanced you can trade SPX with options. I do not recommend trading SPY with shares, you need a ton of money to make a little bit on the move. You could have shorted the fail of $745.75 level as you can see 3 upper wick candles, down to the support from pre-market which would be ca. $5. So to make $500 you would need 100 shares of $SPY, ca. 74,400 USD. For $5000 you need to play with $744,000. Non-sense.
Now, let’s look at the levels for today and some trade ideas and trade log updates:
For today, Thursday July 9, 2026 we have following levels on our algo:
Resistance: 7,520 / 7,560
Support: 7,450 / 7,330
