This Veteran Trader Challenges You to Make $1 Million in 12 TradesVIEW IN BROWSER By Michael Salvatore, Editor, TradeSmith Daily In This Digest:
- The 40-year trading veteran who thrives in chaos is issuing a $1 million challenge
- A “coiled spring” setup in this regional banking stock
- The most overstretched stock in our system is one of the most popular
To say today’s market is giving out mixed messages is an understatement…For example:
- Ever more powerful AI models are disrupting entire industries, like financial services, software, logistics, and cybersecurity. This is triggering double-digit drops in some of the world’s biggest software stocks.
- Thanks to an on-again, off-again blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices are bouncing around like a yo-yo. This has pushed the average price of a gallon of gas to a near-record of $4.50… and the energy sector is up 20% since the start of the year.
- At the same time, stocks that are part of the AI infrastructure buildout are going ballistic. After a 45% run since the start of 2026, semiconductor stocks are three standard deviations above trend. ARM Holdings (ARM), a chip design company, shot up 80% in a single week.
You can look at one sector and say the market has crashed. Look at another and say we’re seeing exuberance. For most buy-and-hold investors, it’s a nightmare. Depending on what sectors you’re in, you’re either doing great or taking on steep losses. But there’s one trader I know who’s looking at the same conditions and seeing nothing but opportunity. His name is Jeff Clark…Jeff is a 40-year trading veteran, former private money manager to roughly 100 of California’s wealthiest families, and the editor of TradeSmith’s options trading advisory, Delta Report. And as he put it to a group of colleagues last week,
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like that before in 40 years as a trader. Parabolic moves don’t last. When they snap, they’re the best buying opportunities of the cycle.
Jeff calls markets like this one “disruption windows.” They’re moments when the normal rules of the market temporarily break down. Stocks move 20% or 30% in a single session. Sectors reprice overnight. Companies that should be steady become volatile, and companies that should be punished start ripping higher. These windows are rare. And when they appear, they don’t stay open long. But they’re the exact conditions for a trader like Jeff. Stocks are moving. Setups are appearing faster than usual. That extra volatility is the “fuel” that options traders need to make meaningful gains. That’s why Jeff is taking this opportunity to launch the first trading challenge of his career. By taking advantage of this rare market disruption, he aims to turn a $5,000 stake into $1 million in 12 trades or less. This challenge isn’t for everyone. But he’s looking for qualified readers to join him. Turning a small stake into a million will be tough. And it may not happen. But his track record shows it’s entirely possible.
Two winning streaks, two volatile markets…Jeff recently asked a team member to go back through the 381 trade recommendations he’s closed over the past nine years at the helm of his Jeff Clark Trader business. And he found 36 streaks of three or more winning trades in a row. Twenty-one of those ran to five trades or longer. Even more interesting, on two occasions — both during exactly this kind of disruption — the streaks ran long enough that someone starting with $5,000 and rolling the profits from one trade into the next would have ended up with seven figures. The first was during the 2023 banking crisis. Nine trades — $5,000 to $1.3 million. The second was during the first big wave of AI repricing in 2025. Twelve trades — $5,000 to $2.6 million. Both streaks took place during windows of volatility like we’re seeing today. Both windows closed within months. Of course, the odds of hitting $1 million in 12 trades are low. But even if Jeff doesn’t hit that mark, his recent track record shows that the journey will be worth it. During a monthlong period that covered the Liberation Day crash of 2025, Jeff posted six winning trades in a row for an average gain of 77%. And over the past year, Jeff’s produced an average winning trade gain of 70%… along with a win rate of 74%. You might be wondering how this is possible in so few trades… It’s because Jeff trades options… Options traders thrive when markets break…Most people hear “options” and picture something complicated and risky. But options were originally designed to help investors reduce risk – and that’s how Jeff teaches his subscribers to use them. Options, unlike stocks, help you make money when the market goes up, when it goes down, and even when it goes sideways. The bigger the move – in either direction – the bigger the potential gain. And the cost of entry is fixed up front, so your downside is capped at what you put in. That’s why options traders thrive in chaos. The wilder stocks behave, the greater the potential to profit. And that’s why right now, with the markets in a rolling series of volatility shocks, Jeff says it’s the perfect time to trade them. On Thursday, May 14, at 10 a.m. ET, Jeff is hosting his 12 Trades to $1 Million Challenge launch event. It’s a first-of-its-kind event where he’ll lay out exactly how he’s planning to help his subscribers do exactly this. Three things matter before you decide whether this is for you:
- The odds of hitting the full $1 million are low — I want to say that plainly. Even in the best conditions I’ve seen in 40 years of trading, this requires favorable markets, disciplined execution, and some luck.
- The Challenge is designed to cap your downside at the starting stake — you commit $5,000, and that’s your maximum loss. The whole structure is built so that even if every trade goes wrong, you don’t get pulled deeper.
- Even if you don’t hit $1 million, the trades along the way are designed to produce real gains – stopping halfway with $50,000 or $100,000 from a $5,000 starting stake isn’t a failure. It’s a result almost no buy-and-hold strategy could match over the same window.
If you like the idea of joining Jeff in his quest to hit the $1 million mark, reserving your seat is free. And signing up before the event puts you on Jeff’s VIP list, which unlocks two of the most useful tools in his arsenal: the Convergence/Divergence screener inside TradeSmith Finance, and Delta Direct, his daily trading blog. Reserve your seat for the 12 Trades to $1 Million Challenge here. A regional bank is wound tighter than any stock in the sector…If you’ve read TradeSmith Daily for a while, the Convergence/Divergence signal is going to look familiar. It’s the proprietary indicator Jeff developed to flag the kind of setups his options strategy is built to capitalize on. For any given stock, the screener tracks three of Jeff’s proprietary moving averages – essentially three different ways of measuring the trend. When those lines bunch together tightly, the stock is coiled and building up energy beneath the surface – just waiting for a catalyst. That’s a Convergence setup. And when the price finally breaks out – up or down – the move tends to be fast and forceful. Exactly the kind of move options trades are built to capture. When those same three lines spread far apart, that’s a Divergence setup. The stock has trended hard in one direction for too long, and it’s vulnerable to a snapback. We’ll get to one of those in a moment. Right now, one of the tightest Convergence setups on Jeff’s screener is in Huntington Bancshares (HBAN) – a regional bank with branches across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. 
Take a look at the chart. After a sharp drop from $19 in early February to a low of about $15 in late March, HBAN shares have spent the last six weeks grinding sideways in a tight range between roughly $16 and $17. You can see the three moving averages collapsing in on each other on the right edge of the chart. They’re nearly stacked on top of one another – about as tight a setup as you’ll find in the regional banking sector right now. You’ll also notice that the Relative Strength Index – a measure of overbought and oversold conditions – is right in the middle at 50. That reinforces just how coiled the price action is right now. HBAN’s price action has flatlined long enough for the trend lines to converge. And anytime that happens, history says a sizeable move is on the way. The break could go either way. But for an options trader like Jeff, that’s not a problem – it’s the opportunity. Because options give you the flexibility to bet on either direction. A bullish breakout calls for a call option. A bearish breakdown calls for a put. Either way, the leverage in an options contract means a relatively modest move in the underlying stock can produce a much larger return. If you’d like to see how Jeff finds and trades setups like this one, reserve your VIP seat for his 12 Trades to $1 Million Challenge here. You’ll get free access to the Convergence/Divergence screener and his Delta Direct trading blog as soon as you sign up. The most overstretched stock we track right now…On the other end of the spectrum from HBAN sits the most overstretched stock currently flagging on Jeff’s screener. It’s a name everyone knows – Amazon (AMZN). 
Amazon traded sideways with the rest of the market for most of February and March, hovering between $200 and $220. Then, starting in early April, the stock took off. In just a month, AMZN ran from roughly $215 to over $275. That’s a 28% move in 30 days for one of the largest companies in the world. You can see the result on the chart. The three moving averages have fanned out dramatically. The price line is sitting well above all three trend lines. And the spread between them is now wider than just about any stock in the system. Plus, the Relative Strength Index is all the way up at 80. That’s a textbook Divergence setup. Amazon’s price has gotten so far ahead of its own trend that it’s now stretched like a rubber band. The further the rubber band stretches, the more force builds up – and the more inevitable the snapback becomes. It doesn’t tell us when the reversion will happen. But it tells us that buying AMZN right now, after a 28% rip in 30 days, is the kind of trade where you’re hoping the music doesn’t stop. For an options trader, this is where the Divergence setup gets interesting. A bearish put option lets you bet on a snapback lower. And it has a defined cost up front, with the potential for outsized gains if the move comes the way you expect. For a buy-and-hold investor sitting on a long position, the Divergence is also a useful warning signal. When the screener flags a stock this stretched, that’s typically the moment to think hard about taking profits, tightening stop-losses, or hedging the position with a put. Jeff has built his career on trading exactly these kinds of setups – on both sides of the market. And right now, with markets this volatile, his screener is finding more of them than usual. Jeff is going to walk through more setups just like this one – and explain how he plans to use them in his 12 Trades to $1 Million Challenge – on Thursday, May 14. Reserve your free seat (and unlock the screener and his Delta Direct blog) here. I’ll be tuning in myself, and I advise you do the same. Jeff doesn’t make claims like this lightly. And the conditions he says he’s been waiting four decades for don’t tend to last. To building wealth beyond measure, 
Michael Salvatore
Editor, TradeSmith Daily |
