【The US stock market is booming—why do we continue to focus on cryptocurrencies and crypto options?】

The US stock market has indeed been quite strong lately. The S&P 500 has been hovering near highs for this period, and year over year it’s close to up 20%. Seeing this kind of行情, a lot of friends have private messaged me asking: Bro, haven’t you always mainly focused on crypto options? Now that the US stock market is so hot, why are you still stuck over there? Aren’t you going to switch over?

I’ll still put the main focus on crypto options. It’s not stubbornness, and it’s not because I’m bearish on the US stock market. There are a few concrete, real reasons that make me feel the opportunities here match my trading style better.

Let’s talk openly about these three most core points today—purely my personal experience, nothing too lofty or theoretical.

First, let’s talk about implied volatility. In the crypto market, implied volatility is naturally about one notch higher than in U.S. stocks. Currently, Bitcoin’s implied volatility is roughly in the 40% to 50% range, while the U.S. stock volatility index is around 15%. The gap is right there: for option sellers, the premium they can collect is noticeably thicker. In a U.S. stock bull market, people feel things are stable and volatility gets compressed, so the returns from selling options don’t look as attractive. But crypto is different— even if the market doesn’t rally or crash much, you can still earn a lot of premium. When I personally run seller strategies, this difference shows up directly on my account curve—not small numbers.

Another point is trading hours. U.S. stocks have fixed market open and close times, and you still get two days off on the weekend. What about crypto? It runs 24/7. If you see news at night or something big happens over the weekend, you can adjust your positions immediately without waiting for the market to open on Monday. In U.S. stocks, news often ferments overnight, and when the market opens, you get gaps, which makes risk control much more troublesome. Personally, when trading options, what I fear most is not being able to react in time—this continuity is especially friendly to mid-term or event-driven styles.

The last one—the one I care about the most. Crypto and U.S. stocks aren’t completely tied together. Sometimes the correlation can be a bit high, but they still have their own independent driving factors. Institutional fund flows, shifts in regulatory tone, Bitcoin’s halving cycle—these are things the U.S. stock market can’t fully cover. Right now, U.S. stock valuations aren’t low anymore, while the overall market size of crypto is still small, and the growth story is still moving forward. Even if U.S. stocks keep going up, crypto could still run an independent trend. If you trade options, you can also add some diversification to your portfolio and capture opportunities for this kind of alternative upside. Of course, I need to say the ugly truth up front: crypto volatility is indeed high, and if leverage is misused, losses can come fast.

This isn’t to say U.S. stocks are bad. It’s just that for someone like me who likes high-volatility environments and can handle monitoring the screen around the clock, these features of crypto options are more to my taste.

If you’re also in a similar style, feel free to pay closer attention. Trading always involves risk, and risk control comes first. What do you all think on Snowball or in the comments? Welcome to chat and share ideas with each other.