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Investors are bracing for more volatility as tariff negotiations develop, and it's earnings season unfolds. Tech names getting a lift, as President Trump softens his tone on tariffs with also plenty of big tech earnings on deck. Here with ways to trade this is all-star charts chief options strategist, Sean McLaughlin. Joining us now from the Options Pit, sponsored by Tasty Trade. Sean, it's good to see you, as always here, and obviously, um a time when options can come in handy when we're seeing the volatility like we are um seeing today. So, I want to just jump right into the trades that you're looking at. One of them is about Amazon, which I think is really interesting. We've seen a lot of bouncing around in Amazon shares. We've got earnings coming up soon, so how are you thinking about it?

Well, you know your previous guests mentioned the heightened risk of recession, and that trickles down and affects consumers. It it can affect people whether they have a job or they think they're going to have a job, and Amazon is one of those companies where we spend as consumers most of our money. I don't know about you, Julie, but I'm getting packages delivered to my house almost on a daily basis from Amazon. And if I feel like my earnings are going to be pinched, I'm probably going to cut back on spending. And a company like Amazon is one of those companies I'll probably cut back on. And so you mentioned we're in earning season here. We have earnings coming up. Uh, volatility has been has been through the roof. We've certainly come off levels that we were at just two weeks ago, but historically speaking, we're still at high implied or high volatility levels. And in the options market, that's uh manifesting in high options premiums. So if I wanted to make a bearish bet on Amazon, just buying puts as an options trader, sure, I could do that, and maybe that wins in a in a big cascading sell-off type situation, but I'm going to pay a lot of money to do that because of the the premiums uh in the options. A better way for me to do it is to uh employ what I call a bear or what is called a bear put spread, where I'm buying an in the money put and selling an at the money put in Amazon. So this trade I've got up here on the screen, uh these are scheduled to expire on May 2nd, which is one day after Amazon announces earnings. They announced on May 1st, after the market closes. And in this case, if Amazon even just goes sideways, I I don't see that happening. I think the likely move is down because in my experience, the way I've learned it, uh if there's ever an earning surprise, it tends to unfold in the direction of the underlying trend. And there's no denying that Amazon's been on a downward trend over the last several months. Uh so if Amazon moves down, a bear put spread obviously will will win because of the directional uh position of it. But if Amazon just kind of stays put and kind of stays in this area, doesn't really make a big move, as long as it doesn't move way higher, what's nice is that elevated premium in those options, particularly that at the money strike that I'm shorting in this trade, the premium comes out of that faster than the rest, and that would put my position in an opportunity to win money. So really in four out of five possible outcomes of Amazon's earnings, I could potentially win as long if Amazon goes way down, just a little down, if it stays sideways, or even if it trades up just a smidge, I could still potentially make money in that trade. I really only lose if there's a big move higher in Amazon, which, I don't know, call me a betting man, but I don't think that's likely in this tape. Do you, so, um, I think it's an interesting trade that you're putting on here. Do you think that, um, these are the type of trades that you could actually do in other kind of magnificent seven names heading into earning season?

Absolutely. I think all the magnificent seven names are at risk. They're all in downtrends, certainly in the last three months or so. And like I said before, if there is an earning surprise, they tend to happen in the direction of the underlying trend. So I think trades like this trade I'm putting on in Amazon, you could put similar trades on in Meta, in Google, uh in Tesla. Well, Tesla just had earnings. Uh but those I think those all of those companies are vulnerable because, as your previous guest was saying, we are at an elevated risk of recession. Now I'm not saying that that we're in, that we are certainly heading into a recession, and I'm not calling for a major long-lasting bare market, but when there's all this uncertainty in the market, the markets hate uncertainty. Until we get some feeling that there's there's a plan in place that we could all kind of get our heads around and understand, I don't I don't see a path forward for stock prices to move dramatically higher. And I think we're seeing that today, right? The way the S&P 500 is trading, the way the Q's, we gapped higher today. Big gap higher, but all we've done is trade lower. We're trading near the lows of the day last I checked. So I feel like we're at the upper bounds of the range for the broader markets, and we don't have much more upside from here until we get more clarity.

Yeah. And that doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Sean, thank you so much. Good to see you.