jail at the end of the day. but the only thing they were better at? burglarizing my house and making false search warrant, no question about it. but like walter cronkite said, "that's the way it is." hey there, "options action"s fans, i'm leslie picker in for melissa lee. we have a big show on deck here is what is coming up. >> announcer: stocks soar to all-time highs but will rising risks derail the rally? if you think we're in for a september sell-off, mike khouw lays out a way to take some protection plus a tale of two charts in the cloud. chart master carter worth sees the best of times and the worst of times for two big names reporting earnings next week and later, chew on this.

tony zhang is finding big opportunity in this $37 billion company on deck with results we'll lay out the trade. it is time to risk less and make more "options action" starts right now. >> all right let's get right to it. we start with a record finish to the trading week on wall street. the s&p 500 and nasdaq closing at new all-time highs. but mike khouw said beware, there are three risks rising risks that could derail the record run mike, kick us off. >> yeah, so i mean obviously here we are at all-time highs. i think it's pretty clear that one of the reasons that we are at all-time highs is because of powell's comments that a lot of people were trying to digest today. those seemed fairly dovish but i think it's important for investors to remember that, of course,'s he not going to sort of lay shocks on the market. we have a big fomc meeting coming in up in september. we are essentially getting prepared for tapering.

but, of course, the tapering, this is a really significant issu because the fed has been purchasing about $120 billion worth of bonds every single month, about $80 billion worth of treasuries and $40 billion worth of mortgage securities now the degree of that tapering, if inflation risks persist, is definitely a headline risk for the market we saw that in the last taper tantrum in 2018. and another risk i think is certainly that we are going to be passing labor day that may not seem like a really seminole event necessarily for the markets to essentially say the end to summer, but the truth is that actually we're entering a historical volatile period for the market a lot of people consider october to be a volatile period, but september tends to be too, of th most volatile months that we typically see. so i think that obviously presents a risk. and then of course we got a little bit of a taste of geopolitical risk this week.

but i think the important thing to remember is that we always have geopolitical risks. we always have macro risks bu it's when you have those in conjunction with a relatively complacent market, an uncorrected market, a market at all-time highs and has valuations close to those that we saw in 2000 because obviously we had a significant pull back in tech stocks i think all three of those things put us in a precarious spot. >> tony, what is your take what do you make of those three risks and what it means for the markets? >> yeah. so when you take a look at jackson hole and the price action from the market here today, largely it hasn't changed the base case here but as mike said, we've reached new all hymn highs -- all hymn high here in equities and we start to see signs of slowdown in the second half due to the delta variant. we see more geopolitical risks now with afghanistan it is prudent in my opinion to start looking at buying some protection however the challenge here is the fact that the implied

volatility of the market has not moved down significantly here over the past couple of months so buying protection here is actually a little bit expensive. so this is really where i think it makes sense to take a look at certain spreads to potentially lower the cost of buying these puts potentially on the market >> carter, what do you make? tony said the "p" word, protection do you agree >> yeah, let me just throw out something that we just worked on team technicals at cornerstone from a statistician jillian tarro. consider the following in the month of august we've made ten new intraday highs in the s&p. that has not happened since august of 1987 and the record number of intraday highs in the front of august is 11 and that was in 1929 do analogs always play out and does this have to be 1987 or 1929, of course not. but these are the things that start to register when you're having a conversation about the "p" word protection, how to take measures in the event of a market draw down seasonally this is the worst

period of year we do know that the august, september, october, three month period of all rolling three month periods is the only one that is negative 1928 to present. >> wow well, i am no financial historian, but you know what happened in 1929 and 1987. so if you think another "p" word, pullback is coming, mike has a way to use options to take some cover mike >> yeah, so i think one way that one could consider hedging some of your exposure and really what i'm talking about is hedging a potential correction correction is usually defined as a pull back of about 10% or more is to take a look at buying put spreads on spy now spy is the etf that tracks the s&p 500 so it is a good proxy for many equity portfolios i was looking out to november, of course that is going to capture that three-month period or at least the second two months of it that carter was just talking about the 440, 400 put spread, when i

was looking at that earlier today, you could spend about $9.70 for the 440 put and sell the 400s for about $3.95 and spending $5 to buy some protection now you'll notice that that lower strike, that 400 strike i'm selling, is about a 10% pullback from where the market is right now and we're selling that put to mitigate the slightly elevated implied volatility that tony was just talking about but i will say with these risk factors and given the fact that we have had such a run here, i actually think that the prices for these options is justified >> good to know. as the market grapples with rising risks to the rally, one of our traders said there is still big opportunity out there especially as we head into the final days of earnings season. tony, what name are you watching heading into next week? >> yeah, leslie, i want to take a look at chewy. this company has seen incredible growth during the pandemic but i think for investors going into earnings next week, i think

the opportunity here is as it starts to focus on profitability in 2021. if you look at the chart itself here of chewy, the stock had a very incredible run to start off the year, but that quickly faded and it's spent the better half of this year trying to get back up to the 87 1/2 level where it roughly started the year on. and since over the past month or so it has been building a bit of a base above that level and i think going into earnings next week is what carries it a little higher here. and if you look at the business itself, valuations are quite stretched here for this particular business. but if you look at the business, they've been able to sustain multiple quarters of 40% plus of year-over-year revenue growth. so i think these rich valuations are somewhat justified if you look at the earnings itself, the market is implied about a 9% move, but over the past eight quarters the stock has only moved on average of about 6% so when you take into account

the fact that stock is trading at fairly rich valuations, which means upside may be limited and the fact the implied volatilities are so elevated, the trad structure that i prefer to use going into earnings is to sell a put spread so i'm going out to the october 1st weekly options and i'm selling the $90, $83 put vertical earlier today when i was looking at this i was able to sell the october 90s for about $6.20 and pay $3.20 for the october 1st 83 puts net-net here i'm collecting about $3 or shy of 40% of the vertical width but because the stock is down a couple of bucks here today i do think for investors who are looking at this trade on monday, you might want to adjust the strikes down by about $2 or so the 88, 80 on monday morning when you place this trade. >> i was hoping for purely options pun purposes you were going to say a collar option, but that's okay. mike, what's your take on tony's trade? >> i think that obviously in situations where you have

catalysts like this we often will see after the news comes out something we call vol suck basically what that means is the premium of the options comes out once that catalyst has passed and if you could take advantage of that along with the directional view that tony has done, that actually sets up as a very good trade. in fact, this is one of the higher probability trades that somebody can enter into when you're using options when you sell options three things can happen, two of them are good if the stock stays where it is or if it goes in your chosen direction, your profitable and since he's using a spread and not selling puts naked, this is a situation where he won't face unlimited downside risk either >> we're just getting started. as a remainder for everything "options action" check out our website optionsaction.cnbc.com while you're there, sign up for our newsletter here is what is coming up next. >> announcer: up next, it is cloudy with a chance of profits. two big cloud names report results next week.

how you could play one for a breakout and the other for a breakdown. >> plus, calling all "options action" fans reach into your pocket and grab your phone and tweet us your question @optionsaction. if it's nice we will answer it on air, when "options action" returns. trading isn't just a hobby. it's your future. so you don't lose sight of the big picture, "options action is sponsored by - ng right now. and thinkorswim trading™ is right there with you. to help you become a smarter investor. with an innovative trading platform full of customizable tools. dedicated trade desk pros and a passionate trader community sharing strategies right on the platform. because we take trading as seriously as you do. thinkorswim trading™ from td ameritrade.

it's taken a lot to get to this moment. because we take trading as seriously as you do. ♪ grew up at midnight - the maccabees ♪ dreams are on the line. you got this. refresh... it all, comes down, to this. ♪♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ welcome back to "options

action." call it a tale of two cloud stocks the chart master says it could be the best of times and the worst of times for two big names reporting results next week. carter, let's take one of these, let's take these one by one starting with zoom what is the set up into earnings >> well so that is the worst of times, one, if we're going to start with the bad one, which is fine so the issue with zoom, i have two charts, we could jump right in the first chart you could see where we are we're at a major inflection point. you call the apex of a wedge or a triangle, it is a standoff but the key is that we know that that great run up, obviously pandemic related, essentially zoom goes from 50 to 600 more than a ten bagger drops 50% and now here it sits in the apex of these converging lines. how does it get resolved you see i've drawn on arrow to the down side. look at the next chart this is what i'm keying off of what we know is that the bottom panel here is relative

performance to the i shares tech and software etf igv and on a relative basis it's alread broken down through the lower line, the converging line we've already breached so the thinking which is a very weak stock stays weak and does not do anything but something unhappy in response to earnings >> all right starting with the bad news first. so if this stock is, indeed, zooming lower, how do you play it mike, you've got one way to do it >> yeah. so i'm not 100% sure if it's going to zoom lower, but i do think that there are some significant headwinds and i don't see it zooming higher. zoom is a product we all use, i use it pretty much every single day. they do see increasing competition from the likes of teams, which is a microsoft product, slack has introduced some calling and conferencing functions and they are heavily used, and one of the important things about this earning season we've seen many high valuation stocks struggl even off of fairly good results, and i'm not sure that the

results we're going to get are going to beat relatively hig expectations here. so the trade i was looking at was going to take advantage of the fact that and i think there are headwind withes and i also think options prices are elevated i was looking at selling the sent 350, 360 call spread. when i was looking at that earlier today, you could checked close to $13 for the 350 calls and spend about $9.50 on the 360 net-net you're collecting about $3.50 on this. i think that trade the price of it may have been adjusted very slightly as the close approached but the idea is very similar to the type of trade that tony was taking a look at, trying to take advantage of elevated options premium, trying to get a trade that has a relatively high probability of profit and picking a directio or at least be neutral on the stock and i think that is what we're doing here. >> tony, what is your take on zoom >> yeah. if you look at the chart on zoom, the 345 level is key the fact that we recently broke below that this week, i think, is a suggestion of what's to come especially if you think about the under-performance of zoom relative to its sector and

relative to even high beta which has been a relative underperformer here for the market so unfortunately i think zoom is heading lower and the credit spread that mike is using, very similar to the trade that i'm using in chewy makes a lot of sense for this bearish vie especially for the 345 level his break-even price on th credit spread is about 353, just slightly above the resistance level. so as long as it stays below 345 or even moves a little bit higher, this strategy will be profitable going into earnings >> all right crowd strike also reporting results next week. carter, i'm guessing this is the best of the times when you look at the charts? >> it certainly is good times. and let's look at the chart. two charts the first is just what you see it is. it's a steady up trend and every time the stock has come down to trend you could see the arrows, it has bounced to the penny. earnings coming, we gapped up earlier in the week. very bullish price volume correlation, the presumption is more to come and now look at the relative

same relative circumstance in terms of what we're plotting it against, as opposed to zoom, look at the relative performance of crowd strike to, again, the i shares tech, software and the etf igv. that is a coiled spring. meaning it hasn't made any relative progress since december but that is the setup for the breakout and we think it is going to do it in response to earnings. >> mike, how are you treating crowd strike >> yeah, so one of the things that carter just said, coiled spring what he's talking about is not that the stock has a level of support, but that it's actually going to advance and that's one of the reasons that i'm taking a look at using a debit call spread here. now i would quickly point out that we saw a lot of bullish activity in crowd strike options earlier this week as people were looking to play earnings on the upside i'm looking out further than most of that activity which was concentrated in the options that expire a week from today the weeklies i'm instead looking out to october.

the 290, 330 call spread when i looked at that you could spend about $16 for the lower 290 strike and sell the higher strike for about 5.5 bucks, maybe a little bit less. net-net your spending under $11 to make this bullish bet that's very close, by the way, to sort of the risk-reward payoff profile that we like when we use debit spreads which is typically a payoff of three to one. so we're spending a little bit move of the distance of a quarter of the distanc between the strikes and giving ourself more time to play out when we're using debit spreads than we are for the credit spreads. >> tony, what is your take on mike's trade >> yeah, so i quite like this trade because the debit spread gives you a very efficient way to take a directional view he's only risking about 3.5% of the stock's value to get about a three to one payoff here on crowd strike and this is a stock that i was bearish on last week when it broke below 245. big turn around here this week and not only is it outperforming the sector that carter is

pointing out, it's outperforming the market, outperforming tech and cybersecurity sector and all of these look good going into earnings. >> we will keep an eye on that next week. up next, we're taking your tweets we're back right after this.

(announcer) carvana's had a lot of firsts. 100% online car buying. car vending machines. and now, putting you in control of your financing. at carvana, get personalized terms, browse for cars that fit your budget, then customize your down payment and monthly payment. and these aren't made-up numbers. it's what you'll really pay, right down to the penny. whether you're shopping or just looking. it only takes a few seconds, and it won't affect your credit score. finally! a totally different way to finance your ride. only from carvana. the new way to buy a car.

when traders tell us how to make thinkorswim even better, we listen. like jack. he wanted a streamlined version he could access anywhere, no download necessary. and kim. she wanted to execute a pre-set trade strategy in seconds. so we gave 'em thinkorswim web. because platforms this innovative, aren't just made for traders - they're made by them. thinkorswim trading. from td ameritrade.

♪ welcome back to "options action." time to take your tweets one viewer asks, they say volume adds weight to price and that is not happening with salesforce which gapped up on more than four times average daily volume only to be struggling on a strong tape today. i was long september 3rd, 280 calls in front of the print and they're now down 80% roll out our walk away tony, what do you say? >> yeah, so i think your vie here on the chart is absolutely correct. volume does add weight to the chart. however, what i think is a little bit concerning here is the time frame that you're using

the options for that particular view because when we think about this type of chart pattern, a breakaway here, usually you need quite a few weeks in order for that to establish and to continue higher here so this is part of why on our salesforce trade last week we used an october expiration and the call spread that we use is up about 35% since we entered this particular trade, so you once to buy yourself a little bit more time but your chart views are absolutely correct >> carter, what do you make of the chart views? >> well, so here is the thing. it was -- it lent a lot of weight to price. there was a huge heavy volume up thrust and gap and it was news related earnings this is a normal reaction. we almost have filled the gap. it is an aggressive buy, and buy more yes, your time frame is a little tough, you've only got a few days, but very bullish circumstance >> mike, what do you say, roll out or walk away here? >> yeah, i mean obviously rolling out would correct basically the situation that both carter and tony have

identified with only a week to go, you definitely want to give yourself a little bit more time when you are taking on long options plays unless they're just related to the catalyst but it sounds like you have a view that goes on a little bit beyond that. >> our next viewer asks, thoughts on the slv silver etf, will it tag 30 by the end of the year time to buy some call options? mike, what is your thought >> yeah, so fundamentally i rather like silver although obviously if you take a look at how it's been behaving, it would seem that 3 is a long way off from where we are right now. i actually would expect even if we do get a rally it is probably going to run into a little bit of trouble up around the 26 level. so the trade that i would probably use for something like this would be a lower or zero cost call spread, risk reversal selling some perhaps 10% out of the money puts and using those proceeds to finance the purchase of an upside call spread maybe the 24, 26 or the 23, 26 call spread.

that would cost close to zero at this point and basically give you a downside buffer of about 10% but give you participation up to an anticipated level of resistance. >> tony, what is your take how do you trade this? >> so i like silver from a charting perspective you have a nice range between 22 and 27 and mike read my mind i think buying calls here makes a lot of sense, but i also like sellin puts as well at the same time to fund the purchase of those calls. so that's exactly how i would play it. >> carter, how do you look at this chart from a technical stand point? >> sure. i think just in terms of adjusting the 30, the odds of hitting 30 by end of the year are close to zero. that being said, there is no reason that you can't get 25, 26 and that is where the overhead supply is. i would be long and play for those levels. >> our next viewer asks will the gap in amazon be filled. carter, back over to you, what do you think

>> you bet you so amazon, think of what happened similar to netflix, a big winner, but then goes into a range for almost a year and rather than breaking out on its earnings it broke down gapped down. but the damage is contained, just as it was in netflix and just as you see netflix climbing back now, amazon, too, is not only likely to fill that gap but ultimately break out and make new highs. >> mike, what do you think >> yeah. i mean fundamentally it's hard to bet against this company. i mean, they basically execute in many areas and we continue to see good growth. i think they're getting decent margins at long last, people forever were asking when is this company going to see profits, and, of course, now we are beginning to see them. they've invested in the business and done so very wisely and i do look like amazon long term >> all right good stuff, guys thank you so much for being here that does it for us here on "options action. we'll be back next friday at 5:30 p.m. eastern. don't go anywhere.

a special edition of "fast money" starts right after this break. i'm searching for info on options trading, and look, it feels like i'm just wasting time. that's why td ameritrade designed "options action" is sponsored by - enter. oh. their award-winning content is tailored to fit your investing goals and interests. and it learns with you, so as you become smarter, so do its recommendations. so it's like my streaming service. well except now you're binge learning. see how you can become a smarter investor with a personalized education from td ameritrade. visit tdameritrade.com/learn ♪

♪♪ visit tdameritrade.com/learn ♪♪

♪♪ (upbeat music) - [announcer] the following is a paid presentation for piyo, created by chalene johnson. she's a new york times best-selling author, a top-ranking podcaster, lifestyle entrepreneur with millions of online followers and has sold millions of best-selling fitness dvds. and today, she's got special free offer especially for you. - hey, is all of the change that you're experiencing, starting to weigh you down? like maybe you're worried about finances, your routine has changed, there's so much pressure on everyone right now. and all that stress makes us gain weight. and to lose the weight, you gotta exercise,