Act I — The Pressure (December 10)
On December 10, I published a thesis titled:
“Energy Is Setting Up for Its Next Big Move.”
At the time, energy wasn’t a headline story.
Oil wasn’t exploding.
Geopolitics weren’t dominating the news cycle.
Most investors weren’t thinking about the sector at all.
But the structure was already there.
The dollar had started fading.
Commodities were quietly outperforming the S&P.
Gold miners, uranium, steel, and copper were all moving while most investors were still focused on tech.
Energy Is Setting Up for Its Ne…
Meanwhile energy itself had spent nearly two years compressing beneath resistance.
That kind of long consolidation doesn’t produce small moves.
It produces repricing events.
The biggest tell wasn’t oil.
It was refiners.
Valero and Phillips 66 were already breaking out while the broader energy sector was still flat.
Energy Is Setting Up for Its Ne…
When a subsector starts leading like that, the market is usually telling you something before the rest of the world notices.
And sitting right in the middle of that setup was Exxon.
A three-year base with heavy institutional accumulation around the $110–118 zone.
Energy Is Setting Up for Its Ne…
That’s why I positioned in:
XOM 01/16/2026 $120 calls
XOM 03/20/2026 $120 calls
Not because I knew the catalyst.
Because the structure said the pressure was building.
Act II — The Move Begins (February 4)
By February 4, the thesis had already started playing out.
One of those XOM expressions moved from:
$3.75 → $27.65
A +637% move.
That’s when I wrote the follow-up:
“This Is What ‘Before It Prints’ Looks Like.”
But that wasn’t the end of the story.
It was the midpoint.
The market had started repricing energy, but the full catalyst hadn’t even arrived yet.
Act III — The Catalyst (Iran War)
Then geopolitics stepped in.
The Iran conflict pushed oil sharply higher and suddenly energy became the biggest story in the market.
Energy stocks went vertical.
And the same setups that had been quietly coiling for months started repricing aggressively.
But here’s the important part:
The war didn’t create the trade.
The war released the pressure that had already been building.
That’s how markets actually work.
Structure first.
Catalyst second.
The Lesson
One line from the original December post explains the entire move:
“Before every major trend shift, the data begins to tighten, coil, and hum — long before the breakout itself.”
That’s what we were seeing.
A system under pressure.
The catalyst just lit the match.
Why This Matters
Anyone can explain a move after it happens.
Very few people document the setup before it does.
That’s the entire philosophy behind this newsletter.
Not chasing headlines.
Not reacting to narratives.
Finding the pressure before the breakout everyone later calls obvious.
The Point of Alpha Before It Prints
The goal isn’t to predict news.
It’s to identify the structures that make certain outcomes more likely long before the market reacts.
December was the thesis.
February was the early validation.
The months after that showed the full repricing.
That’s what “before it prints” actually looks like.
— Connor
Alpha Before It Prints
The uncomfortable truth about trades like this:
By the time the news explains them…
the move is already over.
The energy thesis started December 10.
The options move was already +637% by February 4.
And the biggest part of the move came after that.
That’s how structural breakouts work.
The pressure builds quietly.
Then the catalyst arrives.
Then the market reprices fast.
That’s exactly what Alpha Before It Prints is designed to find.
If you want access to the next setups before the breakout becomes obvious, that’s what the premium research is for.
© 2026 Alpha Before It Prints
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