Market Overview
Wall Street's main indexes closed higher on Monday (Mar. 18), with megacap growth stocks such as Alphabet and Tesla supporting a rebound in technology-heavy Nasdaq while investors also waited anxiously for the U.S. Federal Reserve's meeting this week.
Regarding the options market, a total volume of 35,347,882 contracts was traded, down 21% from the previous trading day.
Top 10 Option Volumes
Top 10: $SPY(SPY)$, $QQQ(QQQ)$, $SPX(SPX)$, $TSLA(TSLA)$, $NVDA(NVDA)$, $AAPL(AAPL)$, $VIX(VIX)$, $IWM(IWM)$, $GOOGL(GOOGL)$, $AMD(AMD)$
Source: Tiger Trade App
Options related to equity index ETFs are still popular with investors, with 6.65 million $SPDR S&P500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ (SPY) and 3.76 million $Invest QQQ Trust ETF(QQQ)$ (QQQ) options contracts trading on Monday.
$Tesla(TSLA)$ shares finished up 6.3%, leading S&P 500 percentage gains, after the electric carmaker said it would soon increase the price of its Model Y EVs in parts of Europe.
There are 1.96 million Tesla option contracts traded on Monday, down 20% from the previous trading day. Call options account for 57% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $175 strike call option expiring March 22, with 110,353 contracts trading. TSLA 20240322 175.0 CALL
$Nvidia(NVDA)$ shares added 0.7% at $884.55 but closed well below its session high. The artificial intelligence poster-child kicked off its annual developer conference as investors waited for new chip announcements from Chief Executive Jensen Huang.
There are 1.18 million Nvidia option contracts traded on Monday, down 40% from the previous trading day. Call options account for 68% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $1000 strike call option expiring March 22, with 40,614 contracts trading. NVDA 20240322 1000.0 CALL
Source: Market Chameleon
It is worth noting that, the world’s third-largest company by market value, is turning into a casino for the YOLO trading crowd. Just look at the options activity on Monday, when traders bet that shares of the $2.2 trillion chipmaker will more than double its $885 price — by the weekend. But pulling that off in less than a week would be quite a reach, even for the hottest stock in the market.
Between 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., traders appeared to have bought more than 24,000 Nvidia call contracts that expire Friday with a strike price of $1,940. They bought it in small lots of about 900 contracts, which could be indicative of retail traders, and paid $24,000 in total. NVDA 20240322 1940.0 CALL
While the trade is insignificant next to wagers on single-digit moves in the stock, it does bring back memories of 2021’s meme-stock mania. The difference this time is Nvidia is one of the most valuable stocks on the planet, not some tiny outfit that can rise and fall in an instant with traders capturing profits in either direction.
Unusual Options Activity
Source: Market Chameleon
$Alphabet(GOOGL)$ shares closed up 4.6% on Monday after Bloomberg reported that Alphabet and Apple were “in active negotiations” for Gemini to power some features coming to the iPhone this year.
There are 818.6K Alphabet option contracts traded on Monday, up 123% from the previous trading day. Call options account for 72% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $155 strike put option expiring March 22, with 57,947 contracts trading. GOOGL 20240322 155.0 CALL
TOP Bullish & Bearish Single Stocks
This report shows stocks with the highest volume of bullish and bearish activity by option delta volume, which converts option volume to an equivalent stock volume (bought or sold).
If we take the total positive option delta volume and subtract the total negative option delta volume, we will get the net imbalance. If the net imbalance is positive, there is more bullish pressure. If the net is negative, there is more bearish pressure.
Based on option delta volume, traders sold a net equivalent of -3,200,671 shares of Apple stock. The largest bearish delta came from selling calls. The largest delta volume came from the 22-Mar-24 177.5 Call, with traders getting short 1,911,052 deltas on the single option contract. AAPL 20240322 177.5 CALL
Top 10 bullish stocks: $FSR(FSR)$, $MPW(MPW)$, $SIRI(SIRI)$, $VLO(VLO)$, $CCL(CCL)$, $ONON(ONON)$, $ABEV(ABEV)$, $MU(MU)$, $ENVX(ENVX)$, $PBR.A(PBR.A)$
Source: Market Chameleon
Top 10 bearish stocks: $AAPL(AAPL)$, $RIVN(RIVN)$, $AMC(AMC)$, $PFE(PFE)$, $SOFI(SOFI)$, $F(F)$, $GOOGL(GOOGL)$, $PYPL(PYPL)$, $PBR(PBR)$; $AMZN(AMZN)$
Source: Market Chameleon
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