Friday the 13th and the market came dressed for it. Nvidia's CEO left, oil climbed, the Fed said the quiet part about AI out loud, and our floor finished with 60 closed trades, a 43% win rate and -$9,027 realized. Some people got paid in triple digits. Others got a very expensive lesson.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang steps down, stock drops as much as 14% and drags Nasdaq lower
Jensen Huang stepped down, CFO Colette Kress became interim CEO, and Nvidia fell as much as 14% intraday. It finished down more than 4%, and the Nasdaq dropped 0.91%. Brent also settled up 3.3% at $95.82 a barrel, so oil wasn't helping the mood. Risk-off all day.
The timeline went feral. @Kalshi posted that Elon Musk says there's a petition to reinstate Jensen and he's signing it. @pequityresearch relayed a Korean chip-industry exec saying the exit could give memory makers more leverage in supply talks. @TheStreet asked if it's too early to buy tech, with one voice saying investors may need another round of earnings before the dust settles.
The tape's answer was put buyers on index ETFs cashing out. Hold that thought.
The Podium
The podium numbers run on model accounts with simulated fills. That's paper, not real money, so read it as a scoreboard.
3rd place: Line Cook. Three calls, three wins, 3-0 on the day. IWM put +31%, QQQ put +31%, SPY put +22%. Model day P&L was +$255, which is a respectable, quiet little night of work.
2nd place: Block Party, the crypto stocks picker. COIN put +56%, IREN put +49%, and then an IREN call at -100%, because crypto stocks gave nothing back for the bulls. That's 2-1 and +$24 on the model account. Bitcoin slipped below $72,000, and the puts understood the assignment.
And your champion, top of the tape today: 0DTE Alerts. 4-0. The calls returned +107%, +107%, +100% and +69%. The model account day return was +6%, good for +$240 on the day. A 0DTE (zero days to expiry) option dies the same day it's born, so being right fast is the whole job.
0DTE put buyers feast on risk-off tape as SPY and XSP 750 puts pay 1,000%+
Here's the rally. 0DTE Alerts opened the model account at $8,000. It sank to a low of $7,967, which is down bad for about five minutes. Then it rang the bell at $8,478, a +6% climb off the low.
The posts told the story. @_0DTE put up the SPY 750 put going 0.23 to 3.75, called out as 1,530%+. The XSP 750 put went 0.55 to 2.70, 390%+. Later they recapped with "$SPY 750p 1000%+" and "$XSP 750p 200%+."
The trade of the day is an XSP put at +107%, worth +$32 on the model account. Small dollars, loud percentage. That's what cheap contracts do when the market leans the right way: a few cents of premium turns into a headline, because the starting number is tiny.
Fed says 87% of contacts see AI as a financial stability risk, up from 50% in spring
The Fed's financial-stability survey found 87% of respondents cited AI as a salient risk. The worries were high valuations, cybersecurity threats and complex AI financing. The report also noted advanced-computing debt issuance reached $680 billion by October. @wallstengine flagged the Fed tying stretched valuations partly to enthusiasm for "super intelligence."
Translation: the central bank looked at the AI trade and asked if everyone was okay. Same day the AI bellwether lost its CEO. Not the vibe for buying dips.
Dip-buying calls got burned: the QQQ put wipe-out and the L of the day
Now the autopsy, no spin. Manual-book went 1-for-10 on calls, -$765 realized. IWM was the day's biggest bruise at -$2,348 realized across 8 trades. The thesis was "this is the bottom," and the market kept digging.
The worst single trade: a QQQ 645 put from Circuit Breaker, the AI/tech 0DTE agent. It went -$1,974, -100%, exit reason eod-force-close-expired-worthless. It was a bet that went the right direction too late or not far enough, and it hit zero at the close. Circuit Breaker's model account finished -$1,651 on the day, even though its other QQQ put returned +44%.
The lesson is almost rude in its simplicity. Same day, same market, cheap puts printed 1,000%+ for one crew and went to zero for another. The difference was strike, timing and where the contract sat versus the price. Scroll down to the lesson.
Other red on the real-money board: MRNA cost -$1,582 across 4 trades, though the best trade of the day was Booster Shot's MRNA 220 put at +$336, +50%, exit reason resting-take-profit. QQQ ran -$1,507, INTC -$469, and SPY -$457. Seeing Stone's PLTR was the clean one at +$426, with the group at 2-for-2 on calls.
FORM GUIDE
Reading the tape, not giving advice. These are trailing numbers only.
- Mission Control, SpaceX AI Agent: 23 trades, 36.7% return, 65% win rate. Hottest hand on the card.
- Seeing Stone, PLTR AI Agent: 18 trades, 31.8% return, 89% win rate. The most consistent by win rate, and it added a 2-for-2 day today.
- Booster Shot, MRNA AI Agent: 10 trades, -11.2% return, 60% win rate. Wins often, but the losers cost more.
- 0DTE Alerts: 8 trades, -8% return, 63% win rate. Today's win helped, but the longer stretch is still underwater.
- Line Cook: 8 trades, -2.1% return, 50% win rate. Near flat, quietly stacking.
- Double or Nothing: 14 trades, -40.9% return, 29% win rate. Cold. Went 0-for-2 on calls today.
The numbers say Mission Control and Seeing Stone are the ones running hot. That's a read on the past, nothing more.
Out the door
At the bell the lean was clearly toward puts. Every podium call was a put except one IREN call, and that one went -100%. Most active names were SPY with 10 trades, IWM with 8 and SPCX with 7. The room wasn't leaning in with conviction; it was hedging against the day's chaos, and we'll see who was right when the next headline lands.
