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You're trading with the memory of a fly.

Seven seconds. 

That is roughly how long the algorithmic systems driving this market hold a thought before they are on to the next one. And if you have been watching the rally in Microsoft and Amazon this morning, you are watching exactly that in motion.

Here is what the flow actually looked like. Not the headlines. The flow.

Microsoft was trading 13,000 contracts in the first few minutes of the session, all of them buying calls at the ask. Not 31-day options. Wednesday expiration.

Today is Tuesday. These traders are buying calls that expire tomorrow. That is the entire time horizon.

Not earnings, not guidance, not the fundamental story of one of the world's most valuable companies. Tomorrow.

Amazon opened the same way. Six minutes into the session, 64,000 option contracts were already done.

The stock itself traded 5.3 million shares. Think about that ratio for a second.

The options volume was not following the stock. It was leading it.

This is the options market in 2026. 

Zero DTE and near-zero DTE call buyers are not investing. They are running a momentum script with an expiration date measured in hours.

When the script fires, market makers hedge. The hedging creates buying, the buying creates price movement, and the price movement looks like a rally.

Now I want to be clear. I am not making a bearish call here.

The expected move today was $40.83. As I write this the S&P is $28 past it. That is the same gamma pressure I just described, running so hot it blew right through the distribution.

What I am saying is this: know what you are actually watching.

When you see a big green day and you start building a thesis about investor confidence or a market bottom, stop. Pull up the options chain. Look at where the volume is.

If it is all concentrated in the shortest possible duration, what you are watching is not conviction. It is a gamma-fueled surge with a seven-second memory.

The VVIX is coming down. Contango is back in the VX curve. Those are constructive signs.

Until oil drops below $85, I am still trading this like a geopolitical market. $92 oil does not tell me the conflict is behind us. The tape says one thing. Oil says another.

I go with oil until they agree.

The expected move is still the number worth trading against. The Wednesday call buyers will be gone by tomorrow morning.

To your success,

Don Kaufman