Meta Joins Tesla, Nvidia in Most Active Stock Options

$Meta Platforms (META.US)$ options volume jumped Thursday, joining $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$, $Tesla (TSLA.US)$, $Apple (AAPL.US)$ and $Micron Technology (MU.US)$ in the five most active stock options as shares of Facebook’s parent company bounced around after entering a bear market earlier this week. 

Shares of Meta rose as much as 4.5% to $610.20 before closing at $586. The stock struggled to hold on to gains after closing at $582.36 on Tuesday, a decline that took losses from its peak in February to more than 20%, meeting the technical definition of a bear market. 

More than 814,800 call and put options traded Thursday. That's almost double the 20-day average of 447,790 contracts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.  

Meta got swept by the slump that hit internet stocks and the rest of the market amid fears that Trump's tariffs could hurt the U.S. economy, curb consumer spending and crimp companies' profitability.

 The parent of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp is one of the two internet stocks that JPMorgan analysts said they liked the most after the recent pull back. They reiterated their overweight rating on Meta in a note to clients. 

"META has established itself as the leading open-source AI platform & the near-term launch of Llama4 positions the company to benefit across core monetization, agentic AI, & L-T growth initiatives,” JPMorgan analysts including Doug Anmuth wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. 

The analysts cited Meta's tens of millions of advertisers and its ability to target ads that generate the right response from customers means the company “will remain relatively more resilient to macro headwinds, especially given Meta’s proven return on ad spend (ROAS) and reach across 3.35 billion daily active users. 

"We expect 2025 revenue growth to be driven by core optimizations, AI investments (Advantage+), Andromeda, video unification, Reels, and Click-to-Message,” the analysts said. “And while we recognize the pressure on earnings and FCF, we believe META has earned the right to spend big on AI — we project capex of $65B in 2025 (+73%) and $76B in 2026 (+18%).”

JPMorgan analysts maintained their price target on Meta shares at $725, implying optimism for a rebound of more than 23% from Thursday's close. 

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