IGV : 50,000 Contracts of 90 Puts Opened!
The news came out the day before yesterday that Anthropic is planning an IPO in September or early October. That would be right after Triple Witching on 9/18 — which roughly translates to bullish after Triple Witching. The bullish playbook is probably similar to before: continue squeezing the shorts, with the broader market dipping first then rallying.
Oh, SPY might not drop, but some sectors will. IGV opened 50,000 contracts of the September 18-expiry 90 put$IGV 20261218 90.0 PUT$ — a buy-side bearish bet with a notional value of approximately $13.5 million. On the same day, PLTR opened 28,000 contracts of the 140 put $PLTR 20261218 140.0 PUT$ — direction unclear. Either way, the software sector is due for another pullback. SPY will likely retrace to the 10-day MA at 760.
A bearish spread block trade opened: buying the 220 put $NVDA 20261016 220.0 PUT$ and selling the 180 put $NVDA 20261016 180.0 PUT$ .
Based on Triple Witching open interest data, a pullback to 200 for NVIDIA looks appropriate. In other words, it's not just IGV that will pull back — SMH is likely to pull back as well.
A block trade opened with 5,056 contracts of the 180 call $SPCX 20261016 180.0 CALL$ . However, I think it will stall around 150 for a while.
Intel plans to raise $15 billion at a price of $95, but due to oversubscription, it has increased the offering to $20 billion — even the CEO and his relatives bought 12 million shares. Long-term bullish.
However, in the short term, the stock is likely to remain in a wide consolidation range, and buying calls will lose leverage. So someone put together a combo: selling the 70 put $INTC 20270115 70.0 PUT$ and buying the 150 call $INTC 20270115 150.0 CALL$ . After hedging at Wednesday's price, the call effectively costs only $1. But after seeing this combo, I feel even more that the stock won't rally in the short term. Typically, traders who use this structure know the trend is sideways and are just betting on a small-probability catalyst — this combo essentially acts as a lower-margin, higher-leverage substitute for the underlying stock.
Options activity continues to point toward range-bound oscillation below 160. EWY needs to be watched to see if it can hold above the 20-day MA.
After the recent sharp rally, it may need to consolidate around 400. A block trade sold the September-expiry 440 call $GLD 20260918 440.0 CALL$ .
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