{"id":27227,"date":"2026-05-15T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/?p=27227"},"modified":"2026-05-14T13:35:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:35:33","slug":"the-money-ladder-is-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/the-money-ladder-is-live\/","title":{"rendered":"The Money Ladder Is Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

On November 19, 1999, a 31-year-old from Hampden, Connecticut, named John Carpenter sat in the hot seat in a New York TV studio and used his “phone-a-friend” lifeline on the final question of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire<\/em>?<\/p>\n

He didn’t need help. He just called his father to tell him he was about to win.<\/p>\n

Carpenter became the first contestant to walk away with the $1 million prize.<\/p>\n

The show was built around the simple idea of a money ladder. Start with a small stake, and climb one rung at a time until you reach $1 million.<\/p>\n

Each correct answer doubles your money… but you only move up if you got the previous answer right. Miss one, and you fall back down a rung – or to the bottom – and the game is over.<\/p>\n

There have been roughly 10,000 contestants on the U.S. version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire<\/em>? Only 12 individual winners and three teams have ever claimed the $1 million prize.<\/p>\n

The odds of success were low – less than 0.2%. But, it was possible. Some people became millionaires by climbing that ladder all the way.<\/p>\n

This idea of a money ladder got me thinking… What if I created a trading challenge built around the same idea?<\/em><\/p>\n

And yesterday, several thousand folks joined me to check out my 12 Trades to $1 Million Challenge. I explained that, instead of contestants answering questions, participants would climb the ladder using option trades.<\/p>\n

They’d start with a small stake. Then they’d roll the proceeds into each next trade until that small stake became $1 million.<\/p>\n

If we hit the mark, great. If we don’t, we still have the chance of turning a small stake into a meaningful amount. And challenge participants would learn a ton about options trading along the way.<\/p>\n

I explained that this kind of challenge isn’t for everyone. But, for someone who can follow a defined sequence of trades, it’s a chance to turn a small stake into a meaningful part of your nest egg between now and the end of the year.<\/p>\n

If you couldn’t join me yesterday, you can check out the replay right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Conservative by Nature<\/h2>\n

It’s important to note that this is not <\/em>how I typically trade.<\/p>\n

I’m a conservative, low-risk trader by nature.<\/p>\n

I like to use options to generate income and make low-risk trades. I always take my initial investment off the table if my trade sees 100% (or more) gains. That approach has kept me active as a trader for more than 42 years – and there aren’t many who can say that.<\/p>\n

This kind of rollover strategy is NOT what I’d recommend in a normal market.<\/p>\n

But, today’s market is anything but normal…<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Anthropic – the company behind the Claude AI model – announced a new security tool that could automatically scan code for vulnerabilities and suggest fixes.<\/p>\n

Within days, three of the most respected cybersecurity companies – CrowdStrike (CRWD)<\/strong>, Cloudflare (NET)<\/strong>, and Okta (OKTA)<\/strong> – each lost close to a tenth of their value in a single session.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, a research firm called Citrini Research published a viral note about what AI was doing to the software industry. It argued that AI coding agents had erased a moat that protected enterprise software for two decades. What used to take a team of engineers and months of work could now be done by one person, in a weekend, for almost nothing.<\/p>\n

Rare Market Disruption<\/h2>\n

Within 48 hours, roughly $285 billion was wiped from the value of seven popular software stocks.<\/p>\n

Software-as-a-service giant Salesforce (CRM)<\/strong> lost as much as 30% of its value in 2026. Atlassian (TEAM)<\/strong>, another enterprise software firm, is down nearly 58% in a single quarter. Even Palantir (PLTR)<\/strong> – a company so deeply embedded in the U.S. military that the Pentagon made its software an official long-term program – lost 15% in a week.<\/p>\n

It’s not just AI. Last year, a single tariff announcement triggered an 11% drop in the S&P 500 in a matter of days – one of the sharpest declines in decades.<\/p>\n

And we’ve seen stocks go on a rollercoaster as a result of the war with Iran.<\/p>\n

We’re in a moment when the normal rules of the market temporarily break down. Stocks move 20% or 30% in a single session. Sectors reprice overnight. Blue-chip companies that should be steady start acting like speculative small caps, and companies that should be punished start ripping higher.<\/p>\n

These windows are rare. And when they appear, they don’t stay open long. But they’re the exact conditions a rollover strategy is built for. That extra volatility is the “fuel” that options traders need to make meaningful gains.<\/p>\n

Trading through one of these disruption windows doesn’t guarantee success. But it gives us the best shot possible at achieving our goal.<\/p>\n

Turning a small stake into a million will be tough. And we may not get there. But my track record shows it’s entirely possible.<\/p>\n

We’ll start with a small stake and see if we can roll it into $1 million in no more than 12 trades, in six months or less.<\/p>\n

Three things matter before you decide whether this is for you:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The odds of hitting the full $1 million are low – <\/strong>I want to say that plainly. Even in the best conditions I’ve seen in 42 years of trading, this requires favorable markets, disciplined execution, and some luck.<\/li>\n
  2. The Challenge is designed to cap your downside at the starting stake – <\/strong>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.<\/li>\n
  3. Even if we don’t hit $1 million, the trades along the way are designed to produce real gains<\/strong> – 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.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you haven’t joined yet, there’s still time to check it out right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    I can’t wait to show you more about how it all works.<\/p>\n

    Best regards and good trading,<\/p>\n

    \"Signature\"<\/p>\n

    Jeff Clark
    \nEditor, Market Minute<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    With a small starting stake, some discipline, and a bit of luck, we can make $1 million in 12 trades or less<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"service":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication":[10],"person":[7],"newsletter-type":[],"ticker":[],"class_list":["post-27227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-minute","publication-market-minute","person-jeff-clark"],"acf":[],"ai_tts_audio_outdated":false,"ai_tts_content_changed_during_generation":false,"ai_tts_legacy_post":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27239,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27227\/revisions\/27239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27227"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=27227"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=27227"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=27227"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=27227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

That makes now the perfect time for my Challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n