How equity markets actually trade — concentration, dispersion, options-flow gamma, vol regimes — beyond the headline index level. The vocabulary desks use when the S&P print and the breadth tell different stories.
The implied volatility premium is the gap between option-implied future volatility and subsequently realised volatility — the price the market charges for bearing uncertainty. Positive on average, it compensates option sellers for tail risk and reflects demand for insurance against large adverse moves in the underlying.
The Magnificent Seven are the seven mega-cap US technology stocks — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla — whose combined weight dominates the S&P 500's market-cap, earnings growth, and index returns, making aggregate index behaviour heavily dependent on a handful of names.
The tape is trader shorthand for the live record of price action across markets — the real-time stream of prints, quotes, and volume that registers what assets are actually doing, as distinct from the narrative or commentary surrounding them. "Reading the tape" means inferring intent and pressure from flow.
13F filings are quarterly SEC disclosures in which institutional investment managers with at least $100 million in qualifying US equity assets report their long holdings. Filed within 45 days of quarter-end, they reveal long equity positions but omit shorts, derivatives, cash, and non-US assets.
The highest price at which a security or index has traded over the trailing 52 weeks (one year). A rolling reference point for momentum and positioning — current price's distance below the high gauges drawdown severity, and synchronous clustering across asset classes near their highs signals broad risk-on appetite.
Call skew and put skew measure the relative implied volatility — and thus cost — of out-of-the-money options versus at-the-money on one side of an asset. Call skew prices upside protection richer; put skew prices downside protection richer, revealing which tail the market is paying most to hedge.