Apr. 16, 2026
The April 2026 surge to all-time highs during a period of clear economic uncertainty suggests that "market sentiment" is being manufactured through aggressive options positioning. I propose the implementation of a "Retail Burn Metric" that tracks the percentage of retail-held options that expire worthless compared to the profits gained by the liquidity providers on those same strikes. If the ratio exceeds a certain threshold consistently, it should trigger an automatic SEC investigation into price manipulation.