I’ve been covering this turn around for the last two years and it’s been a long cycle to get this to turn with some nice moves off the lows, but equally, some nasty drops.

The recent earnings report deserves a bit of attention and I have a quick update for readers today on this name inside.

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- I am not a big fan of the business or the dorky CEO but I am a fan of returns so that aside it has my attention.

There are some great numbers here and a chart that looks ready into end of year.

Read more

This week the call is broken into two parts.

Here is part one free.

The first part is an update on the new research stack and layout on LongVol Report.

The covers some data from the BofA FMS, and commentary then some updates on and .

Read more

Good morning from San Juan!

The LongVol Report Has Been Rebuilt

Less noise. Better research. A clearer way to find what actually matters.

There is no shortage of information in markets.

There are thousands of earnings releases, SEC filings, analyst notes, corporate announcements, price moves and headlines hitting investors every week.

The problem isn’t finding more information.

It’s figuring out what actually matters.

Which beaten-down company is beginning to turn?

Which stock near its highs has fundamentals accelerating underneath it?

Which company just authorized a buyback large enough to materially change the share count?

Which management team is restructuring, selling assets, reducing debt or changing the business in a way that could alter earnings power over the next 12–24 months?

And once you find those situations:

Which ones are actually worth spending your time researching?

That’s what we’ve rebuilt The LongVol Report to answer.

Introducing the New LongVol Research Dashboard

The LongVol Report has undergone its largest upgrade yet.

Instead of simply giving readers more stocks, more charts or more market commentary, we’ve built the report around a much simpler objective:

Find important changes before they become obvious — and make it easy to understand what deserves your attention.

Every issue now begins with a streamlined research dashboard designed to help you understand the most important developments in five minutes or less.

You’ll immediately see:

What changed.

What we’re researching.

What needs action.

What catalysts are coming next.

And, just as importantly:

What hasn’t changed enough to matter.

The goal is not to make you read more.

It’s to dramatically reduce the amount of research you need to do yourself.

Four Research Monitors. One Objective.

At the center of the new LongVol are four proprietary research monitors.

Each searches for a different type of potential opportunity.

🔄 Turnaround Radar

Broken stocks showing early signs of fundamental repair.

We’re looking for companies where expectations have collapsed but the underlying business may be approaching an inflection.

Not companies that have already completed their turnaround.

We want to identify them before the recovery becomes obvious.

Every candidate is classified through our five-stage turnaround lifecycle:

Stage 1 — Distressed
Stage 2 — Capitulation
Stage 3 — Stabilizing
Stage 4 — Inflecting
Stage 5 — Recovery

The sweet spot?

Stages 2 and 3.

That’s where the numbers may still look bad—but they’re beginning to get less bad.

⚡ Event-Driven Monitor

Companies undergoing material changes that could alter future earnings power.

This monitor looks beyond quarterly earnings.

We’re searching for consequential changes such as:

Strategic reviews. Asset sales. Restructurings. CEO changes. Activist involvement. Debt reduction. Refinancing. Cost programs. M&A. Capital-allocation resets. Major contracts.

The question we’re asking is simple:

Did something happen that could make this company materially different 12–24 months from now?

Because some of the best opportunities in markets begin when the historical financial statements stop accurately describing what the company is becoming.

🚀 Fundamental Momentum Radar

Stocks near their highs where improving fundamentals are confirming price strength.

Cheap stocks aren’t the only place to find opportunity.

Sometimes the market is telling you something important.

This monitor searches for companies trading near 52-week highs where the fundamentals are simultaneously improving:

Earnings beats.

Guidance raises.

Rising estimates.

Expanding margins.

Accelerating growth.

Instead of automatically assuming a stock near its highs is expensive, we’re asking:

What if the stock is making new highs because the earnings power of the business is being underestimated?

💰 Buyback Radar

Companies making unusually large bets on their own shares.

Most buyback announcements are meaningless.

A company worth $50 billion announcing a $500 million authorization probably isn’t changing the investment thesis.

But a company authorizing 10%, 15% or even 20%+ of its market capitalization?

That’s different.

We analyze the size of the authorization, actual repurchases, free cash flow, balance-sheet capacity, stock-based compensation and changes in diluted share count.

The goal is to find situations where:

FCF + valuation + aggressive repurchases = materially higher per-share earnings power.

But Finding the Stock Is Only Step One

This may be the biggest improvement we’ve made.

A ticker appearing on a screen isn’t research.

So companies that make it through the monitors move into the LongVol Research List, where we track the actual thesis.

For each company, we break down:

Core Thesis

What does the market currently believe—and what might be changing?

Key Data

The handful of numbers that actually matter to the thesis.

Not 40 financial metrics.

The important ones.

Why It Matters

How those numbers could change earnings power, cash flow, valuation or investor expectations.

Key Catalysts

The specific events that could prove—or disprove—the thesis.

And then we keep monitoring those companies as new information arrives.

That means the research evolves with the business instead of becoming stale the moment the report is published.

The Catalyst Calendar

Good research isn’t just knowing what you own or watch.

It’s knowing what happens next.

The new Catalyst Calendar highlights upcoming events across the Research List and tells you exactly what we’re watching.

Earnings.

Investor days.

Strategic updates.

Product launches.

Asset sales.

Regulatory decisions.

Guidance updates.

And other thesis-critical events.

Instead of:

“AAP reports Thursday.”

The question becomes:

“AAP reports Thursday. Here’s the specific margin, FCF and comparable-sales evidence we need to see to determine whether the turnaround is moving from stabilization toward inflection.”

That’s a much more useful way to approach earnings.

Built to Be Read in Five Minutes — or Researched for Hours

This was another major goal of the redesign.

Not everyone has an hour to read an investment report every weekend.

So the new LongVol is built in layers.

At the top:

The five-minute version.

You’ll see the biggest development, biggest risk, portfolio/research actions, new monitor finds and upcoming catalysts.

If nothing changed?

We’ll tell you that too.

Then, if you want to go deeper, the full research is underneath:

Company analysis.

Valuation.

Margins.

Free cash flow.

Capital allocation.

Catalysts.

Thesis changes.

Risk.

And the datapoints we’re watching next.

Five minutes tells you what matters.

The rest tells you why.

What We’re Actually Trying to Build

I don’t want The LongVol Report to become another newsletter that gives you 20 stock ideas every week.

That’s not useful.

And it’s not how serious investors actually operate.

We’re building something closer to an external research desk.

A system continuously asking:

What changed?

What deserves research?

Where are expectations wrong?

What catalyst comes next?

Has the thesis strengthened or weakened?

And where should we spend our time?

The objective isn’t more activity.

It’s better allocation of attention and capital.

Rather than trying to explain everything we’ve built, I’d rather let you use it.

I’m giving paid Substack readers 30 days of complimentary access to the full LongVol Report.

You’ll be able to experience the new research dashboard, all four monitors, the Research List, Catalyst Calendar, full company research and the rest of the upgraded member experience.

Use it for a month.

See which ideas it surfaces.

See how much research time it saves you.

And decide whether it deserves a permanent place in your investment process.

I’ll still be posting idea flow here but I am giving those of you who are paid readers this chance because it’s a trade — you get it for 30 days and I get your feedback so we can optimize it even more.

Send me a DM or email and I’ll get you set up.

Yours in profits,

Dan

c/o Corporate Secretary

Papa John’s International, Inc.

P.0. Box 99900

Louisville, KY 40269

(cc: Todd Penegor, President and Chief Executive Officer)

August 6, 2026

Dear Members of the Board:

I write as a long-suffering shareholder of Papa John’s International, Inc. ($PZZA) who has watched this once-proud brand—built on the simple proposition of “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.”—be systematically dismantled under your collective stewardship. Today’s announcement of second-quarter results, a sharply lowered full-year outlook, and the suspension of the quarterly dividend is not “disciplined capital allocation.” It is the latest, most brazen chapter in a multi-year campaign of shareholder value destruction that has become intolerable.

In a business most would regard as relatively straightforward, this management team has somehow engineered yet another spectacular failure. North America comparable sales fell 8.3%. Global system-wide restaurant sales declined 4.8%. Revenue dropped 8.8%. You have cut adjusted EBITDA guidance to $180–$190 million from the prior $200–$210 million range and now expect global system-wide sales to decline 2–4% for the year. Management’s tired refrain that “our transformation is taking longer than anticipated” has crossed from stale into insulting. Years of soft comparable sales, repeated guidance resets, underperforming units, and an inability to compete in a promotional QSR environment have left the stock a fraction of its former value.

Worse still, this Board has repeatedly and arrogantly turned away premium take-private offers that would have delivered real value to shareholders. In 2025, Apollo Global Management (with Irth Capital) approached with an offer in the $60–$64 range. More recently, Irth Capital—backed by Brookfield and joined by the company’s largest U.S. franchisee—submitted a $47-per-share proposal. These were not speculative tire-kickers. They were serious, financed approaches from sophisticated buyers who correctly identified the franchise value that the public market under your leadership has refused to realize. By declining or slow-walking these opportunities, you have allowed the stock to continue eroding while shareholders absorbed the ongoing operational underperformance.

The suspension of the $0.46 quarterly dividend only compounds the injury. Shareholders who have already paid the price of your prolonged and unsuccessful “transformation” are now told they must forgo income so management can keep pursuing a strategy that has so far produced nothing but missed targets and declining results.

Perhaps most revealing is the Board’s own lack of skin in the game. Collectively, the eight directors beneficially own roughly 350,000–360,000 shares—barely 1.1% of the Company. There has been no meaningful open-market buying by any board member in the last twelve months; the only increases in ownership have come from routine compensation grants and dividend equivalents. While shareholders have watched hundreds of millions in market value evaporate and rejected premiums walk out the door, the Board has sat on the sidelines with negligible personal capital at risk. This is not alignment. It is insulation.

The path forward is clear and urgent. There are still willing buyers. The Board must immediately form a special committee of independent directors, retain independent financial advisors, and get to the table in good faith to negotiate and complete a transaction that maximizes residual value for shareholders. Continuing to reject serious private interest in favor of another open-ended internal turnaround is no longer defensible—it is a dereliction of fiduciary duty.

The brand still has residual equity. The current public-market path is destroying it. Time is not on shareholders’ side. Anything short of a completed take-private transaction will confirm that this Board prioritizes its own entrenchment over the interests of the owners it is supposed to serve.

Regards,

Daniel X. Bustamante

Sent via email and U.S. Mail

I am finally back after a week or so away to Phoenix for my brothers second child and then a few meetings in Boston and NYC.

For those that don’t know I launched my hedge fund and RIA a while back and haven’t done much as far as cap raising goes but that’s started to change this year so I’ve been on the road meeting current and new clients the last few months.

This recent trip was a mix of current clients, meeting a new one and then speaking with a new prime-broker who I am likely moving to end of the year.

First was Boston, great city, first time there.

The red-eye was Sunday night to meet with two of my clients (face to face) for the first time and it was a good time despite the rain so I killed a few hours before our brunch checking out Harvard.

Brunch was great, packed, but great and it’s always interesting to hear how others have made their money — one thing I notice is that my clients (even those that get my research report) personality on how they made their money in other endeavors is usually similar to how I run portfolios.

In this case real estate investors who bought, and buy, when nobody else wants them — in short, value/distressed assets.

Next, the train to NYC.

From there I elected to take the train to NYC given my flight delays the last 3-weeks and I didn’t get much work done but I got into the city at 6 and headed to a staple: Halal Guys. They put one in Tempe, AZ about 6 years ago and for a year I was there 2 times a week, now it’s Taco Boys (for those who know).

Next day was a few meetings, one with a new client and one with a new prime broker which I am moving to end of year, Mirae Securities.

This is a big deal for the fund/firm because it gives me access to services that are harder to get IBKR (also not a fan) and capital introduction, which is big deal, especially given the returns the last 5-years and me not out there marketing.

Usually, the prime offerings are meant for larger funds/asset managers but through a mutual connection I was able to get set up so it’s too hard to not pass up.

Phoenix isn’t really the mecca for finance, I mean it may be for the financial advisors who sell their boomer clients gold coins and index them into mutual funds and other bullshit products so it was good to be back on the East Coast.

In fact, given the new prime broker relationship and me spending more time in San Juan I think I’ll end up being in the city more as I push the capital raise this year and in the coming years.

On a side note, I do need interns for this fall so ping me if you have any (must be enrolled in a fin/econ program).

Overall a great trip but happy to be back on the desk.

A new Stock Market Call is out tomorrow.

Yours in profits,

Dan

What a week it’s been in this market with large cap earnings, margin calls in Korea and a hedge fund blowing up.

Liquor, leverage and ladies - the three ways you go broke according to Munger…..I don’t run leverage in the money management firm but we do use options as overlays and I explain that and more in the call this week plus:

• Broad mar…

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Last April Opening Bell Daily covered it and I’ve owned it in the fund and portfolios I manage since (trading around it).

The call today did not deliver too much in the way of material changes and aside from a one-time charge (unforeseen) the rest of the call was pretty much on par.

The original view I've held stands and despite the day-traders/aglos getting a hold of it this remains a turn around that I am bullish on so I am just re-iterating the views, talking to a few points from the call and trying to liven up the mood in this video tonight.

I also write ideas for my friend David Hay over at Haymaker and posted a quick update over there to start July as well: read it here.

It’s not pay-walled so please share it.

Dan

Disclaimer: I do already own this position personally and for clients to which my firm manages money for. Not investment advice. Not personalized. Investing involves risk of loss. Do your own research. Consult professionals. Past performance ≠ future results. Not a solicitation, please read fill terms and disclaimer here.

Good morning. I am stuck in Phoenix this week with 110 degree weather which is never fun but it’s a quick trip so I am counting down the days.

Crude is now down -16% in 4 days of trading.

This is ideal and it’s been happening all year long, especially in Q2, which made for great L/S trading.

I was short this move through the futures and through the futures options, a tool which I think are underused by many — maybe that’s a good thing.

The key as I see it with this market is when you get wide ranges/moves like this is it allows you to trade these moves with 10-20 delta options (OTM) so you end up risking very little, to make a lot.

I talked about this theme in this post here: Fat Tail Trades are Here to Stay.

I covered most of it today and some of it Sunday (true story) while I was out wake-surfing thanks to Starlink being on the boat.

One of the things I’ve been hammering on about for the last decade it the need for active-trading/management, ideal for those that know how to do it, not ideal for the financial advisors who speak against it — because then they’d actually have to work.

This year has been a year for just that and I don’t think it stops anytime soon nor do I want it to.

This seems to be a game being played here which we’re all aware of: deal, no deal.

No deal crude rallies. Deal, we roll over hard. Pretty simple if you ask me and the market/investing is never that simple so when it is you take advantage of it.

I talked about being bearish Crude and energy on last weeks Stock Market call.

I think there will be a time to be net long a basket of enegy names again ( ) but not until the end of Q3.

In the meantime the idea is to just continue to trade these ranges because a 17% move like this (long and short) is rare and realizing that and capitalizing on it is what makes the difference in all of it.

Yours in profits,

Dan

P.S.

Be sure to watch that latest call I talked about in there which reported today as well….

Plus some notes on:

• Why I think this sets up a Q4 buy and hold long on hyperscalers

• headed MUCh lower

• Broad market view (lower) on

• - Update before earnings this w…

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I was putting together this weeks Stock Market Call (btw, send in Q&A if you have them) and came across this from the BofA FMS.

Usually I read this each month to get an idea of money flows and to see if their views are in line with mine/vice versa and they got this one right.

The numbers were incredible, sort of:

Revenue grew 24% year-over-year, driven by strong AI-led growth in Search, YouTube, and Cloud, with Cloud revenue up 82% and backlog reaching $514 billion. CapEx guidance was raised to $195–$205 billion for 2026, reflecting ongoing investment in AI infrastructure and continued supply constraints.

This is what I had talked about last year and also coming into this year with clients as a theme to watch: earnings growth decelerating due to CapEx.

Now we’re here.

Google is officially FCF negative.

Not that it matters, until it does, but they are.

At first my views were that if they cut, it would be bad for semis - which holds true - they raised CapEx that’s a net positive…for the time being.

Jefferies (and others) noted it too.

In short: this is a positive. You want these names to trade lower to valuations that are sensible because they’re going to be GREAT CORE positions into 2027 and beyond.

Yes, this is the first time in many years where I can look at this sector and finally say I want to own them for the long-term and I am excited about it because the BTD crowd, financial advisors and passive funds will certainly buy them as they drop.

We should also start to get more into the rotation trade of: defensives, staples (lagging) and healthcare as we get through earnings as well.

This is going to be a great quarter for those positioned short this sector and long into the rotation trade I’ve been hammering on about so get ready for more fireworks because this is just kicking off.

Yours in profits,

Dan

P.S.

The podcast will be out Friday evening.

I am here to golf with a good friend of mine at his club and then have dinner, cigars and drinks with some others in the city this weekend before getting back to the grind in San Juan, which, if I admit has been nice.

This is the first time since 2015 that I’ve been on a trade floor with others and I like the routine of cycling or running on the beach in the morning then the quick 8-minute walk to the office.

Speaking of being back on a desk.

Back in 2014 I was short all Summer into their Q3 earnings no less and the stock then, before the split, used to move a lot — at least a lot by the standards back then compared to the vol we see today.

Long story short, I was already up about 6-figures on this and was trying to secure an end of year bonus and pad the P&L a bit plus I was busy shorting SP E-Minis at the time (they were selling off hard).

I de-risked the trade the day before earnings and the day of forgetting it was earnings that night.

Dumbass move.

The stock tanked over $100 points and opened up the next day down -25% or something leaving me a cool $1.5 or so on the table.

It was a stupid mistake and one that my old boss (and still friend today, I invested in the golf brand with him and still play Rugby on Sundays in AZ) never let me forget.

But this wasn’t one of these “let’s bet on earnings trades” because I’m at home dicking around ideas, it was something I was sure of months before and it was a hedge in my short book.

An idea we talked about to start the Summer and one I was convicted on, so much so that I sized it to the point where the trade was going to be, even without it tanking, in the mid 6-figure range.

And even though I made a decent amount, I abandoned the core thesis.

I ended up taking the next few weeks off and the rest of the year was a bit deflated but a lot of thinking, reflection and anger led me to change how I went about my approach.

And for any aspiring investor or young trader out there reading this let me say that an emotional response has to be elicited before one “wakes up” and makes a change and if you’re like me it might have to happen a lot.

There were really three lessons that I pulled out of this.

1. Pay attention.

If you saw the recent interview with Paul Tudor Jones on Invest Like The Best he alluded to this — he said something along the lines of having so many emails daily that it “gets in the way of exquisite execution.”

Back then I was occupied with too many portfolio positions and running an index futures book also didn’t help the case for focus if I am being honest.

But the reality is that there are too many distractions then and more so today.

That lesson is, in part, why I have a report to track investments ahead of time with all of the day, price targets, updated notes etc. so I don’t make that mistake again. (to be fair back then I did have an excel doc but it was sloppy).

Each week (and each morning now) I go over my book, ideas im tracking, themes im looking at and look at them: did I miss anything? Am I getting close to price targets? Has the core thesis changed?

Back then this wasn’t the case which is why I am religious about my idea tracking, structure and portfolio review each weekend.

2. Trade the ideas, not the P&L.

I hate looking at P&L if I can help it. Back then I was obsessed with it so when I de-risked that idea it was because the P&L was ballooning and I was securing my end of year bonus.

But what I wasn’t doing was sticking to the thesis and that thesis was predicated that numbers would be poor and the stock would be lower into end of year — not that they would miss on earnings that bad, again to be clear.

P&L’s fluctuate and for the day traders they almost certainly have to look at them but for running portfolios of investments I think it’s a detriment, at least it was for me, so when I looked back at what I did wrong this was one of the things.

Today I do two things: one, underwrite what I think the valuation of a Core investment is then compare it to other firms (Morning Star, Value Line) and try to trade the valuation, not the chart or the P&L. Two, I trade the chart — but to be clear, this is just on trades so I still don’t look at the P&L but let price action dictate the exit.

3. Less is more and if there’s more outsource it.

Back then I was running an equity book for the firm I was with then convinced them that year to let me open an index futures book as well so I could hedge out.

In plain speak, I was just trading index futures small to bring in P&L for our equity investments which were sometimes too slow to move, or when they were down, to patch up the P&L via the futures book.

Needless to say this was a lot but we were a small shop and it meant more money for me instead of having another PM.

But less is more. Less news. Less emails. Less indicators. Less screens. Less tickers.

Today I try to keep 8-12 positions on and then actively trade an event-driven book in portfolio.

This is way less than what it was back then and without futures.

Again, the lesson for me was less is more.

Concluding

Each year when reports about this time I think about 2014 and what that did for me to change my process. Not my investment process per se, but my process for trying to tune out noise, increase efficiency and to stay dialed at the task at hand. It’s certainly harder than ever today which is why I selectively read emails, put out that report religiously and double and triple check the portfolio ideas just so that I do my best to not miss anything.

Yours in profits,

Dan

The latest Stock Market Podcast is out.

Back in June I talked about market rotation, we’re getting it.

• instead of a smooth, directional trend, rotation creates choppy, back-and-forth price action.

• Money flows out of one group (e.g., tech/momentum) and into another (e.g., value, small-caps, defensives), causing individual sectors or stocks to swing sharpl…

Read more

Good morning…

I am now fully working from the office a friend of mine built out in San Juan which is great because it’s only about 5 minutes on a bike from my condo. It’s been about 10 years since I’ve been on a trade-floor/desk (I left the hedge fund at 30) and it feels good to be back.

Moving on…..

So far this week we’re getting rotation under the surface which is what I’ve been talking about for the last two months and I expect this market to remain this volatile as we get into earning season.

We’ll see if Trump TACO’s again because overnight the cease fire seemed to have ended making this theme of volatility prevalent, still, in 2026 — I wrote my clients a letter in May talking about this and it is what is but we are moving and that requires some active management.

But this is rotation, a theme I’ve talked about.

The thing is, staples and healthcare are not as “fun” as shiny object stocks but then again I like boring portfolios, despite being on the trade floor again.

So, I expect more of this volatility to continue, but then again, when has it really not been this way?

It’s just about recognizing it and either participating in it or rotating into other names for a lower-vol portfolio….the choice is yours.

The good news is that I’ve been able to get in some great riding in San Juan early in the mornings which allows me to clear my head and think about the portfolios and ideas I am working on….

BTW, I thought that picture with the green bull was great for the bull market rotation!

I’ll be posting a new podcast/videocast this Friday with my friend Lucky Lopez from Automotive Life, make sure to follow him here.

We’re going to be talking about the used car industry, repos and what that looks like from the ground level which will be great because of some ideas that may go into portfolios this quarter around this theme.

Yours in profits,

Dan

Before I start this post let me just say a few things:

• I don’t really like business’ like this because they’re fads but you can trade fads and this is a trade - not an investment.

• I’ve been tracking this since the Alani Nu acquisition last year and they are taking market share but the name has been pushed around (my view by pods).

• This is a trading sardine for me: nothing more, nothing less.

So, you can stop reading if you’re expecting some deep analysis that talks about how this can double or triple — this is not that, it’s good for a trade.

Also, gun to my head, I like Alani Nu over Redbull soley for what they did to Christian “Horndog” Horner but that’s another story.

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• Recap of from last week

• and my views

• Rotation still in play: and charts

• compute - some views on market reaction

• - quick notes

• Q&A

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It’s not a secret that the CapEx spending on Mag 7 and others has been a point of concern for investors and it’s an idea I talked about last year as we looked into the benefactors of said CapEx spending — names like performed because of it, as did others.

The next question I think the market is asking, or should be, is what happens when they cut back? Well you already saw it this week with other names when announced that news.

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I came across this name back in 2023/late 2022 after I shorted Carvana at $150s and made a video on YT about it that sort of went viral. What I got into, on accident, was discovering the auto-auction business and, thankfully, meeting a lot of great connections in the that industry.

This introduced me to and I met the CEO, George Chamoun, in Scottsdale at Used Car Week in the fall of 2024.

That’s when I began tracking the company and, at that time, the valuation was a bit rich but I was studying loan defaults and the pending subprime issue in that space and naturally was a net benefactor.

Plus, the guy started selling out his equity at that time and that’s just not something that I like to see (who does).

I took a small position then, just to pay attention, and got out because I just couldn’t get behind the valuation.

Today, that’s changed and I started a new long on it and have some thoughts to share with readers.

P.S.

I am going to bring on an industry expert next week on the Stock Market Call to talk about not only ACVA but CPRT and the tailwinds he’s seeing at ground level.

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LongVol, A Strategy Set to Embrace.

Back in 2021 I started the website LongVol.com then switched it to LongVolReport.com and it’s something I live and breathe because it’s such a great theme to deploy, especially in the day and age of markets today.

(Old photo from 2020)

Historically, “Long Vol” means you’re long the $VIX but the markets have evolved and it’s more than that today.

Being Long Vol just means it’s a theme: vol has increased in equities the last 6 years significantly and the moves we’re seeing on names make the idea of being Long the idea of harnessing that volatility is real.

You can see it in all forms of data, take the index.

The name was up over +400% since Covid lows, about the time, when I started the report because of retail coming into the markets.

That vol, if harnessed, is a strategy-set and one I've been running in the hedge fund and managed portfolios ever since.

If you were to ask futures traders they thrive off of it, long or short, as long as the minis or other markets are moving, that’s all that matters. I traded on a futs desk for a few years so know that to be true and trading fast-moving markets/names comes naturally do to that so the strategy set works for me.

The worst thing, that I can see, are years like 2017 when the minis would barely more 20 handles a day — boring, not fun.

But we’re now in the degenerate economy and vol is here to stay.

Harness Vol. Don’t Run From It.

If you go back to pre 2010 the options markets were just getting going and the volatility in equities was nowhere near where it is today but the thought process was that vol is bad.

It’s not, unless you’re a boomer money manager collecting your 1% and hoping your clients don’t leave you.

I doubt most of this is going away either and I’ve talked about how active trading is here to stay and I think it is given this data point, and many others.

The SEC just got rid of the PTD rule (silly one and easy to get around before) which should help more of this theme to continue as well.

I see people talk about retail as if they’re going to blow up and disappear and that’s actually the WORST thing that can happen for this theme because it’s primarily them (look at options data pre 2020) that have helped usher this theme in.

Filtering For Big Moves: LongVol

When I think about this concept it’s just one trade: a name is going to move with a lot of vol and I want to be a part of it.

Whether that’s long or short, it’s all the same to me as long as it’s going to be moving.

So when I look at theme, in any sector, I usually try to go through the tickers and see which ones provide more of a “slow and steady move” and which ones are going to, or really, have the ability to, re-price aggressively.

Where as day traders (typically) tend to find this vol intraday and size up a position to capture it in a few hours or minutes, I look at the event/stock ahead of time and try to figure out where it could reprice to and then position for it.

You see this a lot in turn-around stories as well as growth names like (insane moves lately that we flagged in LongVol Lite BTW) and you’re effectively just trying to be long vol - long the big move on a name/sector.

So, that’s a filter for me: where in the sector or what names in said sector can re-price and where can I get long that vol (be it long puts too, as to be clear).

I am going to talk about this more on this weeks Market Call and more about how I am using the LongVolReport (as well as other users) but wanted to introduce some of it here to kick the week off.

Yours in profits,

Dan

On the call we get into:

• The breakout and flag: how I look at idea flow from catalyst, price target, triggers.

• The 2026 Market outlook re-visited: back to staples/rotation, bearish Mag 7

• BofA Fund Manager Survey, key charts and data

• and housing bill

Read more