Intel Moved $12 After Hours Tonight.

Most traders avoid earnings like the plague.

Too much volatility. Too much risk. Too many ways to get crushed.

If you know how to position correctly, earnings season becomes the cheapest time to trade.

Yesterday I put on a trade in Tesla. $0.70 in premium on a $370 stock. Closed this morning at 164%.

This framework has been producing the same results every quarter for years.

In Q3 2025 that window included Microsoft at 297%, Google at 203%, Palo Alto at 182%, Affirm at 162%, United Airlines at 107%, and IBM at 90%. 

Q4 2025 brought Lulu at 232% and CRM at 209%. 

Q1 2026 brought CoreWeave at 247%, Coinbase at 193%, Baidu at 170%, American Express at 150%, and CRM at 84%. Fifteen trades across three consecutive windows, defined risk on every single one, and the smallest winner was 84%.

Here is what made every one of those trades cheap. Earnings volatility is already priced into the options market before the report drops. 

Add the at-the-money call to the at-the-money put and the market hands you the expected distance of the move as a number. Then you just need to build a trade around it. 

Guessing direction on earnings is a losing game. 

Stanford studied over ten million retail options trades around earnings and the average trader lost five to nine percent. 

They overpay for premium, guess direction, and get crushed by volatility collapse even when they are right.

The distance is the predictable part. That is the only part worth trading.

This afternoon I put on a trade in Intel.

BOT BUTTERFLY INTC 100 (Weeklys) 24 APR 26 70/75/80 CALL at $0.69.

Intel reported after the close. The stock moved $12 in after hours and is sitting at $79.30 right now. 

That trade cost sixty-nine cents in premium. It closes tomorrow. 

I have a fighting chance to make money on it. And if it expires worthless, no sweat off my back, I only risked 69 bucks. 

I just walked through the exact process I used on Intel today. The expected move, the butterfly construction, and what I am watching into tomorrow's close. 

The replay is live right now.

To your success,

Don Kaufman