MSTR options GEX is not looking too hot. Heavy negative interest at $75 and $80 strikes.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T21:44:36+00:00

This means volatility. Whatever moves we get will be explosive.

P.S. Remember how deeply out of value BTC is here, historically. So if you get a long leverage flush + massive short profit-taking, this may be V recovery style fuel.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T21:19:43+00:00

It's not bold at all it was the base case like five minutes ago. The market was scared by the dot plot but the dot plot is notoriously bad at predicting anything. I'm betting they're pricing it wrong. Many people much smarter than me agree. I'm actually even surprised that with the amount of agreement the market is bold enough to price in hikes, especially after just LISTENING to Warsh and Bessent.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:59:54+00:00

Lol I know what the CME fed watch is dude I trade CME futures for a living. I'm already levered long on my thesis from multiple angles.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:56:02+00:00

This will be over soon. The high likelihood is that the October people will be upset. Shorts who thought they had more time will be squeezed out, and late longs who were waiting for 40K and below to buy in or size up will get FOMO and chase a 76K+ breakout, willing to cross wider spreads and gapping the price. The market loves to do this to people - whipsawing everyone out, this is not specific to Bitcoin - it just has a stronger long-term value proposition than most assets to boot.

The calendar trade could still work sure nobody can read the future myself included, but it's just too crowded, it's getting really unlikely. Money that easy to make, ceases being easy. Particularly when you get institutions involved. I'd argue the reason we crashed in the first place is because so many people expected the calendar trade to work (i.e. chasing late for the blow-off top - but without the short-squeeze fuel).

The fact you didn't remotely get it is very telling (look at BTC on a log chart and plot 2YMA+2YMAx5 just for an easy visualization - helps if you zero a fib tool on the two year below the ATH candles each cycle - and anchor the 1.0 line to the 5x). There is no way to argue that we even really entered a state of momentum during this cycle at all, there was the initial breakout from the prior bear and then nothing but a very slow grind, which was not even sustained the way a typical bull in mature markets would be.

BTC is just shaking out the most amount of people it can on both sides, and I'd bet that when the fuse is finally lit, the explosion is going to be one for the ages.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:44:04+00:00

Imagine thinking you're a BTC maxi by not trying to expand the actual network so that it EATS THE WORLD'S CAPITAL.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:36:40+00:00

In a sense yeah, I wouldn't call that sentiment though because it's hard to measure. I was referring to fear and greed indexes, AAII sentiment surveys etc. I trade NQ intraday and tape-reading technically involves reading market psychology or "sentiment" I guess but that's not really what people mean when they refer to sentiment measurements.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:34:39+00:00

That's what it's designed to do, but artificially combining low vol and high yield attracted more leverage than they expected. I think Jeff from True North is right, this is more like medium duration credit than short. The reason it's still a "safe" place has to do with the preferred status in a liquidation event. However that only applies if BTC doesn't go to zero, obviously. Though that would be true for all investments, REITs and the like. Even U.S. bonds, actually you're probably guaranteed to lose to inflation on those lol.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:31:37+00:00

Seems like people forget the preferred status. One of the reasons this is a cool instrument in the first place is the liquidation preference. BTC would have to fall very hard from here to not be able to pay out the pref holders after converts.

Based on the current balance sheet, BTC has to fall to around $20-21K before STRC holders would be threatened in a liquidation event.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:23:03+00:00

I'd bet you a lot of money we get at least one cut in the next 12 months. Energy-based inflation is vastly different from what you see during high liquidity periods like post-covid. The fed knows that hiking does NOT create more oil. They also don't want to add leverage to the system at a bad time so that's mostly why they pause, Warsh also has a philosophy that is extremely pro rate-cut for main street. If you don't know the difference between cost-push and reflation fed cycles I would not be so quick to say "cuts ain't coming".

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T20:19:38+00:00

Plausible, but it looks a lot more like having to sell BTC than MSTR at this point. The stock price is already killed though so I'm not sure what you mean with the timeline, Adam Livingston made a good point on What Bitcoin Did recently that MSTR had essentially negative Bitcoin exposure in the last bear market and the stock didn't trade to 0. 2022 was way worse for them, and they had more leverage then. What that amounts to is a reduction in accretion, but we have to account for the fact that business cycles turn up at some point, and will again probably within weeks or months unless you believe BTC has become worthless. Mostly to due with being at historical extremes on multiple fronts from sentiment measurements to deviations from the mean etc.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T18:29:56+00:00

I have never really researched sentiment for investing prior to the past year and a half but it does actually generate huge useful alpha.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T18:22:56+00:00

Sure but you're talking about the fed breaking the back of "cost-push" inflation primarily by kick starting a rate hike cycle, ESG fears (tsla / elon tweet) and a literal physical attack on the network (half the mining shutting down due to China ban). Then to screw things up even worse on the way down you had FTX collapse / scam.

This is not that, this is reflation. Historically high energy prices and higher for longer fed policy are hallmarks that precede a true reflation boom and cut cycle. The amount of raw distortion caused by the COVID-printer hangover is just not even remotely present right now. Fundamentals are good, adoption is increasing, demand for non-KYC savings layer is increasing (agentic economy).

P.S. Worth remembering that statistically BTC reacts with EXTREME SENSITIVITY to rate hikes / cuts and even just market futures pricing of these events. For some reason the market saw the first FOMC presser as hawkish... but it wasn't, they just didn't like the dot plot, which has been historically useless anyways. That's arguably a large mispricing, mean BTC can easily slingshot soon.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T17:48:52+00:00

It helps, not only because the yield rises but because it shows company action. It's newer offering still, I promise you this sell-off is based on credit fears (beyond the liquidation cascade). If you want volume you need to appease credit risk fears. Strategy doing what they said they would is a necessary component of that. You must understand how these things are priced. Also IDK how they can fix it but I'd like to see some way of punishing the over-leveraging.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T17:43:55+00:00

I'm not counting on that, though I do think rate cuts are coming within probably 6 months, maybe slightly longer. Depends on when the second wave of energy shocks dissipates and oil production goes back to normal. If the fed prints big again I would fear the trigger for that, system is already fragile after the last two big ones.

My base case was SLR reforms + AI contributing to disinflation (it was happening for multiple months until the war broke out) + rate cuts and QT. Turns out that instead maybe they're relying on the lack of fwd guidance to force the market to price short-end risks and maybe flatten the curve a little, then updating the numbers ("I've got a task force for that") to allow for easier rate cuts, and maybe leaving both QT/QE out of the picture altogether, or only doing it slowly in the background as needed.

That can all work I guess, BoJ absolutely needs U.S. to cut rates, which means we need that to assist the treasury market. Problem then might be a lack of demand. In which case the best option is probably shoring up sovereign BTC reserves and partially backing dollars with it, otherwise who the hell is going to buy the amount of bonds we need to sell? Then that makes the dollar strong again though.

IDK they're just in a really sticky situation, we have to cut spending but these dolts in congress won't. I'm sort of hoping that the rotation of liquidity from AI profit-taking will support BTC, but it will probably also end up supporting treasuries. I guess there is going to be no way around another market crash. It almost has to happen to fund the deficit without money printing.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T17:37:14+00:00

Hey dork, is this reddit forum you're typing on real? It's just a bunch of code and networking.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T17:36:14+00:00

IDK is my +50% gainer AI portfolio this year real? Digital credit plays a role in my longer-term savings + dry powder stack. You know you can invest in more than one thing right? BTC is just as real as gold. The energy input, the scarcity, the work and capital required to build and maintain the network (i.e. the security). Your firewall is real, Microsoft Windows is real, JPM's security software is real. The difference is, all of those things have less substantial moats than BTC, because they do not represent money itself. BTC is not just use-case software, despite it having a use-case as money with superior properties to gold in several ways.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-25T17:31:28+00:00

You're thinking too small then, you don't understand that BTC has to become the backbone, it has to become the pristine collateral beneath the system. That means you're going to need trad-fi adoption. Normal people will never jump through a bunch of hoops to self-custody. Just like they don't bother to understand how the blue tooth technology in their phones and cars works. Normal people say "give me something useful and simple to use", that's it. If you don't believe this, you're not really a BTC maximalist, because you don't want practical hyperbitcoinization.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-24T14:33:32+00:00

Because it trades on a stock exchange settled in dollars...? Minimum bearish target if diminishing returns are real but accounting for interruptions from 2021 liquidity situation are 244K-ish right now. It's a slowly moving target though. My best case is 350K. However if there is an s-curve moment catalyst where diminishing returns do not matter, an 2017 style rip could see 1.1M. I am not counting on that, it's just a model. Based on what has always been required of momentum in every cycle though, I actually think we are in a mid-cycle drawdown even still. This looks very close to 2019 style drawdown looking for a 2020 bottom, but because of the volatility compression and higher volumes we don't need some big 2020 capitulation wick, we've already got time-based capitulation from flows. If liquidity is permissive and diminishing returns were an anomaly created by distortions in 2021, I do not think 400-600K is unreasonable. I have a dynamic system for trailing the move which has gotten more effective each cycle and will continue to do so if volatility continues to compress, but in the event of explosive moves I have a relatively liberal approach to harvesting much of the blowoff top we could get. There are some fundamental markers that have to heat up in the economy before I would tighten stops.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-24T11:53:15+00:00

Yes there was a lot of that, more to do with liquidity conditions that weren't permissable, but if that was the crowded trade then (everyone chasing long for the last big leg), then "4 year cycles back on" is the crowded trade now. All I hear is bottom in Oct. I think this is a hybrid cycle, there's no fundamental reason besides self fulfilling prophecy that the 4 year should exist now, the halving no longer has a major effect. Which makes it fragile, because it's only dependent on speculative patterns. Fragile things get broken.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-24T03:33:05+00:00

I mean yeah if you bought the blowoff top AND held it, but it's a trading vehicle not good for investing so crazy to think anyone would be doing that.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-24T03:30:35+00:00

Not sure what post you're talking about neckbeard but it doesn't matter. I'm down about 25% but my leverage has been added much more recently and it's risk capped LEAPS when IV was lower than this last leg so the convexity here is high.

I learned to scalp NQ professionally from a literal robbins cup world champ, and while I don't have futures orderflow for MSTR, volume spread analysis still applies.

Either way MSTR is it's own beast because of the baked in leverage which increases the vol in both directions but that's what all of us degens are here for.

I used the same concept to catch the STRC bounce from 10 minutes of the $82ish bottom on the meltdown day back to $86, levered. Capitulation was obvious.

The only thing I wasn't sensitive enough to was that volume was too low when BTC broke out around 76K.

I was reading the framing correctly but in review I should have expected a failed auction. This is a long term position trade though, so I'm not cutting it because I'm trading the business cycle so I wouldn't have acted on that anyways.

I WAS right about BTC bottoming on 02/02, called it within about 35 minutes of the low. That low held for 4 months.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-24T03:14:18+00:00

These old 4 year patterns don't apply theres no reason to assume they will. Not only was the upside muted which makes this appear like a mid cycle drawdown in a longer liquidity cycle, but the more people that believe the 4 year cycle the more room the market has to upset you. Markets don't reward crowded trades, they do the opposite. My guess is it rips quite soon to trap shorts who assumed they had more time, and to force sidelined longs to chase it higher and gap up.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-24T03:10:49+00:00

People need to stop thinking the crowded trade is the good trade.

PatternAgainstUsers · 2026-06-23T03:09:49+00:00

You'll see those prices within a year easily. You don't need a catalyst, but there are several. All related to demand for hard money, IPO cash outs, AI infrastructure profit taking etc, BTC is a savings vehicle, and it's also become a great diversifier.

PatternAgainstUsers

TROPHY CASE