Yo Pit Crazies,

Something funky is going on in the market.

The VIX does not want to drop, stocks do not want to fall very much, and traders are revaluing the future at light speed.

Investors might hope Nvidia (NVDA) rescues stocks later in the week, but something bigger is happening.

While this is not a new zero DTE stock, it was one of the flyers over the last few years, and it is now trading at Liberation Day lows.

That stock is International Business Machines (IBM), and I started running it when I had my Div+ Program in 2022.

Back then, folks were afraid to buy anything as inflation was ravaging the economy. I bought a lot of big dividend stocks when folks did not want to buy anything. Maybe it had something to do with all the PPP money and stimmy check flow, but inflation was and is a real thing. As a reminder, we still have positive rates of inflation, just not as fast as before. Instead of gaining nine pounds a year, we are gaining three pounds but still getting fatter.

I call your attention to the stock because it is still in my IRA, albeit from lower levels. I liked it better at $320, and now it is $220. What happened? Nothing really. The Watson AI magic just became null because no business will need it anymore. What? But that is really what happened. Traders just decided to revalue every software company on the planet. Even Microsoft (MSFT) is not immune, down from $550 to $380 currently.

IBM 2 YEAR CHART

I expect IBM will show up on my Beta Fingerprint Scanner soon because it is getting close to a 52-week low. Most of the software companies that have made this arc eventually hit 52-week lows, so the target is around $214 for IBM. Since Mag 7 listed zero DTE options, the stocks are running all over the place. There are opportunities every day in them, and because the stocks are falling out of favor, some option premiums in the short term are getting cheap. There are sectors that have done well in 2026, but software is not one of them.

To Your Trading Success,

AG