This session opens with Bubba noting that his existing positions are in good shape, a circle trade closed as a winner the day before, and a GLD position wrapped up with a small locked-in profit, but that day-trading opportunities have been genuinely hard to find lately given how light volume has become. He puts real numbers on it, pointing out the S&P is running around 394,000 contracts against a normal pace closer to a million at that point in the session, a gap he returns to repeatedly as the reason so many names on his board simply don’t qualify for a trade.
The macro discussion here is more detailed than usual. Bubba walks through the week’s CPI and PPI data, both of which came in showing inflation cooling a bit, and connects that directly to a market-implied shift in Fed expectations, with the odds of a September rate hike dropping to around 35% from what he’d originally expected. He ties this to a visible rally in bond and note futures, explaining the inverse relationship between bond prices and yields for viewers who might not be familiar with it, and flags both markets as levels he’s personally watching as potential future shorts once the current rally plays out.
On the trade side, two names qualify for same-day and next-day call spreads. In CRWV, he sells the 113/114 call spread for a 40-cent credit ahead of next-day expiration. In SMCI, which he describes as going straight up, he sells the 43/44 call spread for 35 cents, also for next-day expiration. Both trades reflect a consistent thread in his approach: when a stock has run hard enough to look overextended relative to its recent range, selling a tight, defined-risk call spread against that strength is one of his preferred ways to participate without needing a big directional call.
In a moment of real transparency, Bubba discloses that he personally took a short position in crude oil that morning and is sitting on a small loss at the time of taping, walking through his stop level (around 83.20) and explaining that he added to the position himself rather than recommending viewers do the same. It’s a useful, honest look at how even a trade built on a reasonable thesis (crude having already bounced meaningfully off its lows) doesn’t always work immediately, and how he manages risk on his own discretionary trades differently than the day-trading setups he shares live.
The episode closes with Bubba previewing an idea for expanding what the channel teaches, floating the possibility of introducing weighted double diagonals as a new position type in the coming weeks, positions he describes as lower-risk to carry continuously and well-suited to benefiting from both big directional moves and volatility spikes. Combined with the CRWV and SMCI spreads and his candid crude oil update, it’s a session that leans more on education and market context than on high trade volume, consistent with how thin the tape had become heading into the back half of August.
About Trading Live With Bubba
Trading Live with Bubba is a live-session show on the Tradier Hub YouTube channel hosted by veteran trader Todd “Bubba” Horwitz. Airing Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Bubba scans markets in real time, calls out credit spread and day trade setups, and teaches trading discipline through live narration.
