The Market Almanac

Some days on the market are ordinary. Some days, a single report lands at 8:30 in the morning and the whole market jumps before you finish your coffee. This document is your calendar for those days — and your formula sheet for every day.

Part 1 walks through the recurring events that move markets on a schedule: inflation reports, Federal Reserve decisions, jobs numbers, expiration days, earnings season, and the year-end games big funds play. For each one you get what it is, when it lands, who it hits hardest, and a checklist for trading it — or standing aside from it.

Part 2, Numbers That Matter, collects every key formula from across Alpha Academy in one place: how to size a position, how losses recover, option breakevens, spread math, expected move, expectancy, and the futures point-value table. When you need a number mid-week, this is the page you open.

Part 1 — The Event Calendar

The Year at a Glance

CPI — The Inflation Report

What it is. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the government's monthly measure of how much more expensive everyday life got — food, rent, gas, insurance, all blended into one number. Traders watch it because inflation drives what the Federal Reserve (the Fed, the US central bank) does with interest rates. Hot inflation means the Fed may keep rates high or raise them; cooling inflation gives the Fed room to cut. Rates steer the whole market, so this one number can move everything.

When it lands. Monthly, usually at 8:30 AM ET, before the stock market opens — released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Who it hits. Index futures and 0DTE options first and fastest. The first minutes after a surprise print are the most violent of the month: spreads widen, prices gap, and stops get jumped.

Trade it or stand aside?

• Know the exact morning it's coming — never be surprised by CPI day.
• Expect the first move to reverse: the opening spike after a surprise often retraces hard.
• If you trade it, size down — the same stop distance gets hit far more easily.
• Standing aside until 10:00 AM, when the dust settles, is a complete and respectable strategy.

FOMC — The Fed Decides

What it is. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the Fed's rate-setting group. Eight times a year it announces whether the federal funds rate — the base interest rate that influences every loan, mortgage, and credit card in the country — goes up, down, or stays. The surprise is rarely the decision itself (it's usually expected) but the statement's wording and the Chair's press conference answers, which hint at what comes next.

When it lands. Eight scheduled meetings a year. The statement drops at 2:00 PM ET; the Chair's press conference follows at 2:30 PM ET.

Who it hits. Everyone. Stocks, bonds, futures, options, gold, crypto — all repriced in the same minutes, often whipping up, then down, then up again before picking a direction.

Trade it or stand aside?

• The danger window is 2:00–3:00 PM. Volatility in that hour is the widest of the month.
• Implied volatility is pumped up before the announcement and crushes right after — bought options can lose value even when price moves your way.
• Many professionals simply flatten before 2:00 PM and let others gamble on the wording.
• If you trade the afternoon, wait for the press conference — the second move is often the real one.

The Jobs Report (NFP)

What it is. The Employment Situation report, nicknamed NFP for its headline number, nonfarm payrolls — how many jobs the US economy added or lost last month, plus the unemployment rate. Strong jobs mean a strong economy (good for stocks) but also a Fed that can keep rates high (bad for stocks). That two-sided logic is why the reaction is often messy.

When it lands. Monthly, usually the first Friday of the month at 8:30 AM ET, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Who it hits. Same profile as CPI: index futures pre-market, then 0DTE options from the open. Bond yields jump instantly, and rate-sensitive sectors (tech growth stocks, homebuilders, banks) swing hardest.

Trade it or stand aside?

• It's an 8:30 AM release — futures traders see the move a full hour before the stock market opens.
• Wage growth inside the report matters almost as much as the jobs number — fast wage growth is inflation fuel.
• Friday expirations plus an NFP morning is maximum 0DTE chaos; beginners should watch, not trade.
• Revisions to prior months are printed in the same report and can flip the story mid-morning.

OPEX — Monthly Options Expiration

What it is. Standard monthly stock and index options expire on a fixed day each month. That day is called OPEX. Huge numbers of contracts die at once, and the hedging around them can tug prices toward heavily-traded strike prices into the close — an effect traders call pinning, because price seems pinned to a strike. (You met the hedging engine behind this in Gamma & Dealer Positioning and Trading With GEX Levels: dealers adjusting hedges as expiration approaches.)

When it lands. The third Friday of each month. If that Friday is a market holiday, expiration usually moves to Thursday — check the exchange calendar.

Who it hits. Options traders holding that month's contracts, and anyone trading index options in the final hours, when gamma — the speed at which an option's sensitivity changes — is at its maximum.

Trade it or stand aside?

• Know which of your open options expire this Friday — every month, no exceptions.
• Expect strange, choppy price action near big open-interest strikes late in the day.
• Weekly and daily expirations have made "expiration effects" a daily reality on the big indexes, but the monthly OPEX is still the largest.
• Rolling or closing positions before expiration week removes the whole problem.

Quad Witching

What it is. Four times a year, several contract types expire on the same day: stock options, index options, and index futures. (The fourth member of the original "quad" — single-stock futures — no longer trades in the US, but the name stuck.) The result is one of the highest-volume days of the year, with a chaotic final hour as massive positions settle, roll, or close.

When it lands. The third Friday of March, June, September, and December — it is OPEX, supersized.

Who it hits. Index futures and index options traders most; but the volume surge and end-of-day price swings reach individual stocks too, especially index members.

Trade it or stand aside?

• Quad witching days have a split personality: often quiet and range-bound midday, then wild in the final hour.
• Settlement prints can move a stock for reasons that have nothing to do with its business — don't take the last hour personally.

• Futures traders: your expiring contract's last trading arrangements differ by product — know yours and roll on time.
• When in doubt, finish early. The day's strangest moves happen after most traders have gone home.

Earnings Season

What it is. Public companies must report their results — revenue, profit, and guidance (management's outlook) — every quarter. The reports cluster into earnings season: roughly six weeks when hundreds of companies print, starting with the big banks. A single report can gap a stock 10% or more overnight, up or down, because the stock is being repriced on real news.

When it lands. Seasons begin about two weeks after each quarter ends — mid-January, mid-April, mid-July, mid-October — and run about six weeks. Most reports drop before the open or after the close.

Who it hits. Swing and position traders above all: you hold through the print, and stops do not protect against gaps (a stop becomes a market order at the open, filled at the gapped price). Options traders face IV crush — implied volatility inflates before the report and collapses after, shrinking option values even on a correct directional call (Trading Earnings & IV Crush).

Trade it or stand aside?

• Keep a written list of every holding's next earnings date. Never be surprised by your own portfolio.
• Decide before the print: hold, reduce, or exit. Deciding during the gap is not deciding — it's reacting.
• If you buy options into earnings, you are betting on a move bigger than the expected move (see Part 2), not just a direction.
• Beginners: earnings season is for watching and journaling how stocks react, until the tuition is cheap.

Index Rebalancing

What it is. Indexes like the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 are lists, and lists get edited. Companies that grow get added; companies that shrink get dropped. Every index fund on Earth must then buy the additions and sell the deletions — forced, price-insensitive trading in size, announced in advance. Rebalancing is the day those edits take effect.

When it lands. S&P 500 changes are announced as needed, with the big quarterly reviews effective in March, June, September, and December. The Russell indexes rebuild their lists once a year, traditionally in late June, with the preliminary add/drop lists published weeks ahead.

Who it hits. The specific stocks being added or dropped — additions often pop on announcement and again at the effective close; deletions sag. Index futures and ETF traders feel it as heavy closing volume rather than chaos.

Trade it or stand aside?

• The announcement move and the effective-date move are two different events — know which one you're looking at.
• The effective day's closing auction is enormous; prices can print oddly in the final minutes.
• Owning a stock because it's being added is a trade about fund flows, not about the company — size and exit accordingly.
• For long-term holders, rebalancing is mostly noise: your index fund handles it for you.

Year-End — Window Dressing & Tax-Loss Selling

What it is. Two seasonal flows collide in November and December. Tax-loss selling: investors sell losing positions before December 31 to book the loss against their taxes, pushing the year's losers down further late in the year. (The wash sale rule still applies: buy a substantially identical security within 30 days before or after the sale — a 61-day window — and the loss is disallowed.) Window dressing: fund managers tidy their portfolios before year-end reports, buying the year's winners and selling losers so their published holdings look smart.

When it lands. Tax-loss pressure builds through November and December, with the last trading day of the year as the hard deadline. Window dressing concentrates in the final days of December (and, in smaller form, at every quarter-end).

Who it hits. The year's biggest losers get sold hardest, then often bounce in January when the pressure lifts — the flip side swing traders watch for. The year's winners get a cosmetic bid into year-end.

Trade it or stand aside?

• A beaten-down stock falling in December may be facing tax selling, not new bad news — context matters.
• January bounces in former losers are a tendency, not a promise; the company's problems may be real.
• If you harvest losses yourself, mind the wash sale window and keep records — and get tax questions answered by a professional.
• Holiday weeks are thin: low volume, early closes, wide spreads. Smaller size or no size is a legitimate year-end position.

Part 2 — Numbers That Matter

Position Sizing — The Master Formula

One formula decides how big every trade is:

shares = dollars you are risking ÷ (entry price − stop price)

Decide the dollars first, from your account and your risk rule. The school's standard starting rule is risking about 1% of the account per trade. On a $10,000 account, that's $100 of risk. You want to buy at $50 with a stop at $48, so each share risks $2: $100 ÷ $2 = 50 shares. The position costs $2,500, but the amount you actually stand to lose at the stop is $100 — the position size and the risk are different numbers, and the risk is the one that matters.

The Loss-Recovery Table

Losses are not symmetrical. Lose 10% and you need more than 10% just to get back to even, because the gain is earned on a smaller account:

This table is the entire argument for small position sizing and hard stops. A −50% hole requires doubling your money to escape. Professionals fear the deep hole far more than they chase the big win.

Options Breakevens — Where a Bought Option Starts Winning

One standard option contract controls 100 shares, so every premium is multiplied by 100: a $2.50 premium costs $250 per contract, and that full premium is the maximum loss on a bought option.

• Call breakeven = strike + premium. Buy the $100 call for $2.50 (paying $250): the stock must reach $102.50 at expiration before you profit.
• Put breakeven = strike − premium. Buy the $100 put for $2.50: the stock must fall to $97.50 at expiration before you profit.

Between today's price and the breakeven, the option can still gain or lose value before expiration — but at expiration, these are the lines that matter.

Spread Math — Max Gain and Max Loss, Before You Enter

A spread is two options traded together, and its great virtue is that both edges of the outcome are known on day one. Prices below are per share; multiply by 100 for the dollars on one spread.

• Debit spread (you pay to enter, e.g. buy the $100 call, sell the $105 call for a net $1.80 debit): max loss = the debit = $180. Max gain = width − debit = $5.00 − $1.80 = $3.20 = $320, reached if the stock finishes at or above $105.
• Credit spread (you are paid to enter, e.g. sell the $95 put, buy the $90 put for a net $1.20 credit): max gain = the credit = $120. Max loss = width − credit = $5.00 − $1.20 = $3.80 = $380, reached if the stock finishes at or below $90.

Notice the habit: with any spread, state the max loss out loud before entering. If you can't, you don't understand the trade yet.

The Iron Condor

An iron condor is two credit spreads at once — a put spread below the price and a call spread above it — built for a stock you expect to stay in a range. You collect credit from both sides.

• Max gain = total credit received. Collect $1.20 on the put side and $1.10 on the call side: max gain = $2.30 = $230 per condor, kept in full if price finishes between the two short strikes.
• Max loss = the wider wing width − total credit. With 5-point wings: $5.00 − $2.30 = $2.70 = $270 per condor. Only one side can lose at expiration — price can't finish below the put spread and above the call spread — so you never add both wings together.

Expected Move — How Far the Market Thinks It Moves

Options prices contain a forecast: the move the market expects over a period, called the expected move. From any option's implied volatility (IV), the formula is:

expected move % = IV × √(days ÷ 365)

Example: a stock with IV of 20% and 30 days to expiration: √(30 ÷ 365) ≈ 0.287, so the expected move is 20% × 0.287 ≈ 5.7%. On a $200 stock, that's about $11.50 in either direction. Use it constantly: it prices earnings bets (Trading Earnings & IV Crush), frames 0DTE days (0DTE Timing & the Session Map), and tells you whether a move was ordinary or genuinely surprising.

Expectancy — Your Edge in One Number

Expectancy is what a trade is worth on average, over many repetitions:

expectancy = (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss)

Win 40% of the time, average win +$300, average loss −$150: (0.40 × $300) − (0.60 × $150) = $120 − $90 = +$30 per trade. A system that loses more often than it wins can still be profitable — and a system that wins 70% of the time can still bleed if the losses are huge. This is why the school grades your journal by expectancy, not by win rate.

The VIX and the Month Ahead

The VIX is the S&P 500's implied volatility, quoted as an annual number. To turn it into the move expected over the next month, divide by √12 ≈ 3.46:

one-month expected move % ≈ VIX ÷ √12

A VIX of 20 therefore means roughly 20 ÷ 3.46 ≈ 5.8% expected over the next 30 days — the derivation you met in Volatility & the VIX A–Z. Remember the standing warnings: the VIX itself is an index, not something you can buy directly, and products that track volatility long-term tend to decay because of how their futures contracts roll (contango, in Volatility & the VIX A–Z's terms).

Futures Point Values

In futures, money is counted in points, and every contract has its own dollar value per point. Wrong point value, wrong math — memorize your instrument's row before you trade it.

So a 10-point ES move is 10 × $50 = $500 per contract; the same 10 points on MES is $50. And one ES contract at an index level of 6,000 controls 6,000 × $50 = $300,000 of exposure — the leverage fact from The Futures Setup that should sit behind every futures decision.

R Multiples — Measuring Every Trade the Same Way

R is your planned risk on a trade — the dollars between entry and stop, after sizing. Express every result in R and trades of different sizes become comparable:

• Risk $100, make $250 → +2.5R. Risk $100, lose $100 → −1R. Risk $100, lose $60 because you exited early → −0.6R.
• A run of trades reads like a report card: +2.5R, −1R, −1R, +3R = +3.5R total, whatever the account size was.
• Your stop defines R before the trade. If there was no stop, there was no R — and the trade can't be graded.

R multiples are how the Paper Challenge (The 30-Trade Paper Challenge) and the Capstone grade you: not on dollars, which depend on account size, but on how many units of planned risk you gained or lost.

Chapter Summary

• The market has a rhythm section: CPI and the jobs report at 8:30 AM ET, the FOMC at 2:00 PM ET, OPEX on the third Friday, quad witching four times a year, earnings seasons, rebalancing days, and year-end flows. None of them should ever surprise you.
• Every event has the same three questions: when exactly does it land, which arena does it hit hardest, and is your edge good enough to trade it — or is standing aside the trade?

• Position sizing is one formula: shares = dollars risked ÷ distance to the stop. Risk is chosen first; size is computed second.
• Losses compound against you: −25% needs +33.3%, −50% needs +100%. Small losses are cheap; deep holes are nearly permanent.
• Options math anchors: premium × 100, call breakeven = strike + premium, put breakeven = strike − premium, bought option max loss = premium paid.
• Spreads and condors tell you their max gain and max loss before you enter — credit spread max loss = width − credit; condor max loss = widest wing − total credit.
• Expected move = IV × √(days ÷ 365); the VIX converts to a monthly move by dividing by √12.
• Expectancy — not win rate — is the number that decides whether a system lives.
• Futures are counted in points with fixed dollar values (ES $50, MES $5, NQ $20, MNQ $2, GC $100, CL $1,000 per point), and every trade gets graded in R.