The XLF volume action last Thursday was telling a completely different story than price

anybody else noticed the weird divergence in financial sector flows before that tariff news dropped

I was going through sector data in Thursday afternoon and almost thought my feed had some kind of error. Price was basically doing nothing, floating around flat maybe +0.05% the whole session. But the on balance volume was completely falling apart, something like 35-40% below the moving average with around 600 million in distribution happening quietly under surface

Then the weekend comes and suddenly we get headlines about new 25% tariff threats and by Monday open the whole sector just gaps lower and gets absolutely punished

The price action told you nothing. Zero. If you were only watching candles you probably felt fine holding into weekend. But the flow data was screaming that somebody with much better information was quietly unwinding financials exposure before anyone in retail even knew what was coming

I don't want to throw around words like insider but the timing is really difficult to explain any other way. Large players were derisking in very deliberate way while keeping price stable enough to not attract attention

This is exactly why I think watching volume divergence against price is so underrated in options. The candles are the last thing to move, flows usually tell the story first

Saved myself from holding calls over that weekend because of this, would have been pretty ugly otherwise