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Smart Money Pulse.
An approachable read on where smart money is leaning and which markets sit at historical extremes. Written for ETF investors, not futures traders.
- Issues
- 34
- First issue
- Mar 2026
- Cadence
- Fridays, after the CFTC release
Issues
Page 3 of 4- June 2026
- W2506·23 The Record Short That Stopped Being a Squeeze and Started Being a Winning Bet For weeks the story in stocks was simple: hedge funds were piling into an enormous bet against the S&P 500, and once the market caught a bid, those bears would be forced to buy back in a panic and light a rally. That coiled-spring setup is still here.
- W2406·12 Stocks Got Their Relief Rally. The Tension Moved Into Bonds. What a difference a week makes. The fear that gripped markets after that ugly Friday selloff broke almost as fast as it arrived: progress on a US-Iran deal sent the Dow up 900 points on Wednesday, the S&P 500 is back near its highs and the volatility gauge has settled back to earth.
- W2306·05 The Smart Money’s Playbook Just Went Stale, and That’s the Whole Story This Week Here’s the situation you need to understand before anything else: the positioning data we read every week is a Tuesday snapshot, and this Tuesday’s snapshot is now badly out of date. It shows dealers having quietly built up a cushion under Nasdaq and small caps, the kind of structure that normally smooths out the ride.
- May 2026
- W2205·29 Tech and Small Caps Just Got a Green Light That the S&P 500 Lost Something unusual happened under the surface of the stock market this week: Nasdaq and Russell 2000 dealers both crossed into a regime that historically dampens volatility and favors orderly price gains, while the S&P 500 lost that same protection. Seven contracts changed their positioning regime in a single week, the broadest repositioning of the cycle.
- W2105·27 Six Regime Changes in One Week. That Doesn’t Happen by Accident. Six out of ten contracts we track changed their positioning regime this week. That’s the kind of broad structural reset that happens a few times a year, usually right before a big directional move.
- W2005·15 The Nasdaq Spring Is Coiled and Wall Street Knows It Something rare is happening in Nasdaq positioning right now. Leveraged hedge funds have built the largest short position against tech stocks in the entire two-year dataset, sitting at the absolute floor of historical readings.
- W1905·08 The Bond Market Just Blinked, and CPI Could Make It Flinch Again For the first time this cycle, the pressure on short-term Treasuries has meaningfully eased. Dealers had been building one of their most aggressive short positions in the 2-Year Treasury over the past two months, a setup that amplifies rate moves and makes bond markets fragile.
- W1805·01 The Bond Market Just Flashed Its Biggest Warning of the Year The Treasury market is screaming, and nobody seems to be listening. This week, 10-Year Treasury dealer positioning crossed into its most extreme short level of the entire two-year dataset, joining the 2-Year Treasury which already sat at its most extreme reading in the book.
- April 2026
- W1704·24 The Bond Market Is Screaming. Are You Listening? Something rare is happening in the 2-Year Treasury, and it matters more for your portfolio than anything else in this week’s data. Dealer positioning just hit the 5th percentile of the past two years, the most extreme short reading since this dataset began.
- W1604·17 The Big Money Just Flipped Its S&P Bet, and Nasdaq Shorts Are Trapped Something rare happened this week. The leveraged hedge fund crowd that piled into bullish S&P 500 bets just seven days ago abandoned ship and flipped to outright shorts.