Will the Selloff Continue? The market began to waver at the end of last week, with the S&P 500 down nearly 2% and Nasdaq dropping 3% from mid-week highs. We noted a spike in MAGS put buying and a rising put/call ratio in our previous Sunday Newsletter as big tech earnings approached. Then, our October […]
options positioning
OPEX Week Shatters Market Calm
Vol Sellers Forced to Cover as VIX Breaks 20 On Friday, the market’s calm broke heading into the October monthly options expiration. The S&P 500 dropped over 1% on the day while the VIX jumped to close at 20 — the highest level in nearly three months. Options traders spent Friday scrambling for protection, marking […]
Banks Look for an Earnings Bounce Ahead
XLF: The Next Rate-Sensitive Setup The S&P 500 once again flirts with all-time highs, proving that current headwinds can do little to sway bullish sentiment. The threat of rising rates continues on as one such headwinds, creating interesting trade opportunities along the way. Last week, we highlighted an opportunity in the utilities sector (XLU) if […]
Last Call: Relatively Few Traders Are Hedging Equity Downside
Bond volatility has jumped while equity downside hedging stays light. See what call skew in TLT, HYG and XLU says about how traders are positioned.
Surging Yields Create Risk — And Opportunity
With 10-year treasury yields now at two-decade highs, the topic of rates has dominated markets. Rising rates adds meaningful stress to the economy at large — creating both risk and opportunity for traders. The market’s most rate-sensitive corners have taken the brunt of the damage. Small caps (IWM), utilities (XLU), homebuilders (ITB), and industrials (XLI) […]
META Rewrites the AI Trade
Meta’s new Muse AI Agent has done what a year of capex headlines could not: it has convinced the market that the company’s $200 billion investment in AI has a consumer-facing payoff. META rallied 13% over the past week and pushed toward 52-week highs as the personal agent app topped the download charts. The enthusiasm […]
Quiet Oil Options Mask Tail Risk
Oil prices drove headlines this past week amidst flare-ups in the ongoing Iran conflict. WTI crude broke above $100 on September 15, and diesel fuel hit an all-time high of $6.31 per gallon. The mystery is that despite the price spike, the options market for oil remains unusually subdued. The CBOE Crude Oil Volatility Index […]
AI Stocks Options Positioning: Call Selling, Not Put Buying
Brent Kochuba of SpotGamma joined CNBC on September 16 to read AI stocks options positioning, bond ETF put skew and rising correlation.
Hedging Against a Volatility Spike: VIX Calls vs. SPX Puts
A series of major market catalysts arrive next week: the FOMC rate decision, VIX Expiration, and September Triple Witching OPEX. Options positioning suggests that institutions are already paying up for event protection. Over the past two weeks, we have observed notable VIX hedging activity in our daily FlowPatrol reports. This included several particularly significant positions: […]
AI Infrastructure Runs Hot into September
August closed with robust corporate earnings, and nowhere was that clearer than in the AI trade stocks. Last week’s standout report came from Dell (DELL), which jumped 16% after beating estimates and raising guidance. Dell is a leading server provider for AI data center infrastructure. Its results echoed what Nvidia (NVDA) showed a week earlier: […]