I stared down at the mat in disbelief.
Sweat, pouring down my face like a faucet.
I had just been tapped out for the fifth time in less than five minutes by a man half my size….
To make matters even worse, he looked like Harry Potter.
Whatever ego I entered the training room with that day left my body faster than the beads of sweat puddling below me.
This humbling experience was nearly 15 years ago. It was the first time I did live rounds of submission grappling.
Prior to it I had some experience in traditional wrestling and thought adding in submissions to the equation wouldn’t be all that different.
Ego was my tuition payment on that error.
My Harry Potter-esque training partner was a jiu-jitsu brown belt who was preparing for ADCC trials (the grappling equivalent of the Olympics), and I was a fresh young white belt who thought I was up for the challenge relying on brute force alone.
He quickly dispelled me of this notion by repeatedly submitting with ease.
He had an answer for every attack I attempted.
In fact, the harder I tried to force positions, the easier it seemingly became for him to exploit the massive holes in my game.
It wasn’t until I had an additional year or so of training that I even understood how it happened, but over time I came to realize that day I was playing checkers while my opponent was playing chess.
I think back on that first day of training and the lessons I’ve learned on the mat since because the principles of jiu-jitsu have so many parallels with trading….
The harder you try to force a trade the way I tried to enforce my will on my opponent that day, the worse positions you’ll find yourselves in.
Rather than attempting to jam a square peg through a round hole, you’re better off waiting for the perfect set-up to present itself then executing swiftly when it does.
I bring this up now, because from my perspective the Bitcoin options market isn’t giving us a whole lot of reasons to be active.
What this boring, range bound market does offer us however is the time to study the current structure and share some signals to be on the look-out for which will offer much cleaner set-ups if they come to pass as we exit Q2.
So without further ado let’s dive in….
The Chop Don’t Stop
We had both a CPI print and FOMC announcement last week. And even some decent price action to start the week.
Yet not much has changed on BTC from an options volatility perspective.
As we can visualize on the BVIV implied volatility index chart below, each and every spike in IV since the March highs has been promptly sold off. This has created a long series of lower highs and lower lows on the chart.
This week was no exception as Wednesday morning’s high of 55 quickly reverted -10% back down to 50 by Thursday afternoon.
Volatility crushed.
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