On June 25, 2026, an Apple brand logo was displayed at a store in Lower Manhattan, New York. The U.S. stock market has been sluggish for two consecutive months, with Treasury yields hitting new highs, and earnings reports from Google parent Alphabet and Tesla falling short of expectations. Bulls are urgently seeking a leading stock to prop up the market. Apple is now pinned with high hopes.
Among the top ten stocks by weight in the S&P 500 index, only Apple's share price is within striking distance of its all-time high. After trading sideways for the previous seven months, Apple has rallied 20% from its late-June low, and its current price is less than $2 below the record high set just over a week ago. Apple is scheduled to report its earnings after the U.S. market closes on Thursday.
Based on trading volume ahead of last Friday's close and overall open interest data for this summer, options traders are betting on a continuation of Apple's recent strength. Large institutional investors have been buying in-the-money call options, while many speculators are wagering that the stock will hit a new all-time high before this Friday. Apple's U.S. stock quote: regular close at $333.02; after-hours price at $334.15, up $1.13, or 0.34%; the after-hours high reached $11.36 higher, or 3.53%.
According to data from options analytics firm SpotGamma, total premium on Apple options traded last Friday reached $590 million, with call options accounting for $442 million. Data from trading platform ThinkOrSwim shows that traders bought nearly 560,000 call options, while only 332,000 put options were traded. A more critical measurement from the Chicago Board Options Exchange's Cboe LiveVol indicates that the current options pricing implies a nearly 4% price swing for Apple following its earnings report. In contrast, the average move for Apple's earnings over the past year has been only 1%, making this expected volatility unusually large.
"I think Apple has a high probability of stabilizing the market this week," said Nigam Arora, founder of The Arora Report. "Investors view Apple as a defensive name because, unlike many of its peers, it hasn't been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI capital expenditures."
Last Friday, the single largest Apple options trade involved an investor spending $2.6 million to open a new long call position with a $280 strike price expiring in mid-August. The contract has a Delta near 1, making it deep in-the-money and effectively functioning like holding the stock itself—a classic bullish strategy using options as a stock replacement.
According to data from financial website BarChart, the $320 strike price has the highest open interest among options expiring this Friday, with 13,000 call options and 5,000 put options. This suggests that even if the earnings report fails to drive a rally, investors are broadly confident that last week's low will not be breached.
SpotGamma data shows that the most heavily traded contract expiring this Friday was the $300 strike put, with 7,500 contracts traded for a total premium of just $374,000. The second highest volume was the $340 strike call, with 5,000 contracts traded at a total premium of $2.3 million. As of last Friday's close, this $340 call option was quoted at $4.25 per contract. To profit from the exercise, Apple would need to rise 3.4% this week, breaking through its all-time high of $335.
Sina Cooperation's large platform futures account opening is safe and fast with guaranteed access. Massive amounts of information and precise interpretations are all available on the Sina Finance app. Editor: Guo Mingyu.
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