Founder, Masters in Trading
Four years ago, I made the boldest call of my career on one stock the markets left for dead.
In 2021, no one was paying attention to GameStop (GME).
For those that don’t know, GameStop is the video game equivalent of Radio Shack for electronics or Blockbuster for movie rentals.
It used to be a big chain that gamers would flock to for new games and console release.
Today, it’s a chain known more for endless rows of unsold Funko Pop toys and shuttered stores than big sales.
GameStop has been underwater for years. But back in 2021, it looked like the end.
Keep in mind… We were at the height of the “physical retail apocalypse” sparked by the pandemic.
GME had almost zero presence in the e-commerce space. That meant it was getting completely clobbered by competitive, online storefronts like Amazon and Steam while its stores remained shuttered.
The stock traded around $4.78 a share on the first trading day of 2021. Considering it had traded as low as $1 back in July 0f 2020, no one was really paying attention.
Everyone thought it was dead money. But I saw something different…
What many didn’t know was that the smart money was getting into position.
Institutional traders were betting huge sums that the stock would crash even further. A whole slew of hedge funds and other smart money players had taken massive short positions in the stock.
And I was one of the first to know anything about it.
For nearly three decades, I traded options for the pros – whether on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange or as the partner of a well-known bond prop firm.
It was my job to leverage the sort of intel institutional traders used to place huge, market-making bets.
So back then, that massive trading volume around the stock grabbed my attention.
Right after I spotted that tell, I noticed something else as well…
Another player was quietly piling into $5 GameStop calls. For those of you who are new to options, calls are simply bullish positions traders take on a stock.
On the surface, it seems bizarre anyone would bet on the stock running higher.
But that position told me one thing… The price was about to spike – hard.
Now there’s always first-mover advantage when you get in early and often. It’s how you really play the game when you’re an options trader like me.
So I recommended the stock to my followers. Keep in mind… This was well before the near-daily headline news bombs started coming out around the stock.
I knew I had spotted a massive trade in the options market before most people knew anything about it. It was powerful intel that I simply had to share with my readers.
And once I did, the domino effect was incredible…
The GameStop Pile-On No One Saw Coming
A social media site called Reddit got behind the beleaguered stock.
Day traders amassed on a Reddit forum called WallStreetBets. And they all soon realized the same thing I did.
The seeds of a whole movement were sprouting.
They figured if enough people got together and bought GameStop, they could “squeeze” the hedge funds out of their positions.
This would force a massive run-up in the share price.
And that’s exactly what happened.
A whole wave of day traders stuck at home in the middle of the pandemic stormed the markets. They bought up shares en masse and drove the stock higher.
Even Elon Musk encouraged followers to buy more shares.
I’d done my best to signal the markets to what was happening.
Aside from my recommendation, I posted videos to my YouTube channel all about the massive short squeeze throughout the first few months of 2021.
And then the unbelievable happened…
GameStop surged in the months following my video recommendation from $4.50 to $483.
Here’s some perspective… At their best, GME shares had only ever traded as high as $14 and some change. The stock went public in 2005… And up until 2020, it had returned about 89% to shareholders.
But in just a few short months, Gamestop’s fortunes suddenly – and unexpectedly – turned.
It soared to $483 in a matter of months for a ridiculous 10,633% gain.
Think about that: a $10,000 investment would have turned into more than $1 million in that short time frame.
One of my YouTube followers, CDean30, put it perfectly…
“You’re the real one who predicted this, Jonathan. I’ll admit it. I watched your video and have been playing it since AUGUST when you made the other video.”
Our position in GME netted my viewers over 202% in just a couple of days.
We made out like bandits.
And for the so-called “smart money,” it was a painful lesson…
Melvin Capital, a hedge fund that took a massive short position in GameStop, lost 30% of its funds in under a month…
The run-up in GameStop’s share price forced Melvin Capital to close out its short position at a massive loss…
And two other famous hedge funds, Citadel and Point72, had to step up with $2.75 billion in capital to save Melvin Capital from collapsing.
GameStop’s big run clearly catalyzed the markets in a big way for retail traders.
Now I’ve kept close tabs on the stock ever since.
GameStop has certainly made a lot of head-scratching moves in the last four years.
But one thing it has been very good at is returning value to investors who know how to trade it.
That 2021 run wasn’t the end of the story. Not even close.
I spotted another huge – and profitable – move back in 2022 that landed my viewers gains of more than 100%.
Last year – just when everybody had left GameStop for dead again – traders pushed GME up nearly 400% in a matter of days. Now it wasn’t the right time for us to profit from GME…
Now this is really striking.
Bitcoin has already jumped from $90,000 to $110,000 since May 1st.
And with our most recent trade on the stock, we’re watching the markets for a profitable exit as I write to you.
Yes, my viewers have been making triple-digit gains on GME for years.
But I’m not telling you all this to brag. There’s a lesson in all this for regular folks just trying to get a leg up on the stock market. And it all comes down to one approach that every trader needs to know about.
How the Smart Money Trades
I’ll put it in simple terms.
Great trading is all about leveraging great intel.
I’m not talking about reading chart patterns and following the latest CNBC headlines.
That’s all surface-level.
I’m talking about the kind of intel that only institutional traders, hedge funds, and investment banks know anything about.
GameStop’s massive run was a perfect example of how regular folks could wield the kind of intel usually reserved for institutional players.
And leveraging access to that data was my job for 30-plus years.
My experience speaks for itself…
In 1997, I got my start as a floor trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I traded futures on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 during the dot-com boom and bust.
By 2003, I’d become Director of Trading at a leading proprietary trading firm.
Then I left the floor in 2003 to join a proprietary trading firm, joining a small group of traders to trade volatility in the bond market.
That’s where I got the opportunity to help the biggest institutions in the financial world absolutely conquer the options market.
I was making markets for major players like Goldman Sachs – all while managing millions of in capital from my own stable of traders.
My experience helped me make a lot of money for some of the biggest forces in the financial world.
But ultimately, I felt as if my best work was still to come.
I found myself thinking, “Why can’t regular folks get in on these smart money buy signals?”
And that brings us right back to the tools traders use to spot these big moves in the first place.
I saw GameStop’s big move because, 10 years ago, I hit on one really big idea.
I developed a software tool around a key market indicator.
It’s a tool that tips us off to the biggest trades changing hands in the options market before most have any idea of what’s going on.
I call it the Unusual Options Activity (UOA) Scanner.
We leverage what the smart money already knows to score market-beating gains.
And that’s exactly the intel I hand my readers in Advanced Notice.
This UOA Scanner has seriously changed the game for my viewers…
In the last five months alone, we’ve managed a major winning streak while the markets melt down.
Back in May, we landed a striking 44% gain on PayPal after its latest earnings beat triggered a massive surge in call volume.
Just a few weeks ago, we rode a massive smart money bet on Sibanye Stillwater to a 141% gain in just 39 days…
And after holding a position in Alignment Healthcare for less than a month, we exited one of our call positions for a stunning, near-200% gain.
Those gains I showed you above aren’t just once-in-market cycle opportunities. And they’re not the only positions that have handed us huge gains against a volatile stock market.
The markets are handing us more opportunities like these as I write to you.
If you know how to track real market flow — not the headlines, but the footprints that institutional players leave behind — it’s possible to find trades with huge upside even in this kind of chaos.
Every day, I track Unusual Options Activity — where big money is moving before the market catches up. It’s one of the most powerful indicators I’ve ever used in my career. Especially when volatility spikes, UOA often shows us where the real action is happening.
This week, I’m launching The Masters in Trading Options Challenge to teach you the exact process we use to follow the “Big Money Tell” and turn unusual options activity into real opportunity.
It’s one of the most lucrative strategies out there… And I’m excited to make all the tools needed to find these “Big Money Tells” available in one easy-to-learn series of lessons aimed at turning any options trading novice into a pro.
But I must warn you: I’m only making this presentation available for a limited time. And there’s only so much space to bring new traders into my system.
If you’re interested in trading like the biggest players on Wall Street, I encourage you to sign up for the special master class I’m hosting today.
The gains you’ll see from this system will help you master one of the most volatile markets in history.
So just click here to learn all about my system for spotting market-making options trades.
Remember, the creative trader wins,
Jonathan Rose