Your research desk

It grades a stock, options or event-contract trade against a checklist written for that kind of trade, and shows you every check it ran. A swing trade is judged on trend, volatility and reward against risk; a long-term holding on the business underneath it. The result is rules-based output with its reasoning visible, not a recommendation to buy or sell, and not personalised to your circumstances. It is free and needs no account.

The desk tracks the releases that reliably reprice the whole market rather than one company: the Federal Reserve rate decision (FOMC), the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the monthly jobs report (non-farm payrolls), and the Producer Price Index (PPI). Alongside them sit two calendar mechanics — monthly and quarterly options expiry, and the quarterly index rebalance — both of which fall on a third Friday and can move volume sharply without any news at all.

Triple witching is the third Friday of March, June, September and December, when stock index futures, index options and single-stock options all expire on the same day. Positions that were held against each other have to be closed or rolled at once, so trading volume rises steeply near the close. The move is mechanical rather than informational: it reflects expiring contracts being settled, not a change in what anyone thinks a company is worth.

The VIX is the option market's estimate of how much the S&P 500 will move over the next 30 days, quoted as an annualised percentage. A reading in the low teens says options are priced for a calm month; a reading above the mid-twenties says they are priced for a rough one. It is a measure of expected movement in either direction, so a high VIX does not by itself predict a fall.