The Floor Trader Who Follows the Money
Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI).
One lesson from Jonathan Rose’s 28 years of trading has never changed:
Money moves markets.
Not headlines. Not earnings. Not analyst upgrades. When real money – institutional-size money – comes into a stock, that’s the signal that matters.
Jonathan runs the Masters in Trading advisory over at TradeSmith’s sister company, InvestorPlace. Before that, he was on the floors, first trading electronic NASDAQ futures at the CME, back when demand was so intense you had to show up at 3 a.m. to claim a terminal. Ultimately, while spending four years as an options market maker on the CBOE floor, everything clicked.
On the options floor, Jonathan learned to read order flow the way a doctor reads vitals. A 25,000-contract print on a small stock – struck 25% out of the money – isn’t noise. It’s someone with conviction and capital who couldn’t execute in the stock market without tipping their hand. So they went to options instead.
He built a tool to find those prints. He’s been refining it since 2015.
The results: a 95% average gain across all closed positions on a 54% win rate – because he structures every trade to risk $1 to make $5.
I sat down with Jonathan to hear how floor trading shaped his edge, how he reads smart money in today’s market, and what he’s watching right now – including a specific trade in copper he likes on this pullback.
Watch our full conversation below.
Now he’s partnering with Marc Chaikin – creator of the Chaikin Power Gauge and one of the most respected names in quantitative equity research – to add a direction layer on top of his unusual options activity signals. Back-testing shows the combination would have kept him out of losing trades and into winning ones.
By combining the best of each of their wheelhouses – Marc’s years of Power Gauge research and Jonathan’s trading floor and options expertise – their new Smart Money Super Signal offers 10 chances to double your money in 12 months using their model portfolio.
When both signals fire on the same stock at the same moment, you get a double-confirmation trigger that, according to Marc and Jonathan, does not exist anywhere else today.
The Super-Signal is already firing on specific stocks. And soon, Jonathan and Marc will join forces to reveal the full method, beginning to end.
To see Jonathan’s new platform with Marc Chaikin in action, join their Convergence Summit on May 28.
To building wealth beyond measure,
Michael Salvatore
Editor, TradeSmith Daily