Market Overview
U.S. stocks closed slightly higher in languid trading on Wednesday, with little market-moving news to fuel conviction as the S&P 500 hovered just below bull market confirmation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%, the S&P 500 gained 0.14%, and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.16%.
Regarding the options market, a total volume of 33,226,855 contracts was traded, up 24.31% from the previous trading day.
Top 10 Option Volumes
Top 10: SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, Invesco QQQ Trust, Tesla Motors, iShares Russell 2000 ETF, Apple, Marathon Digital Holdings Inc, NVIDIA Corp, Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon.com, iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF
Marathon Digital Holdings Inc gained 15.24% on Wednesday with expectations that demand for the cryptocurrency will jump if US regulators allow exchange traded funds to hold it directly.
There were 680.4K Marathon Digital Holdings Inc option contracts traded on Wednesday, jumping over 75% from the previous day. Call options account for 64% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $30 strike call option expiring December 29 $MARA 20231229 30.0 CALL$, with 43,331 contracts trading. Meanwhile, the $30.5 strike call option expiring December 29 $MARA 20231229 30.5 CALL$ surged 226.75% on Wednesday.
Unusual Options Activity
GameStop gained 5.82% on Wednesday and had its largest daily percentage gain since Dec. 13.
There were 91.54K GameStop option contracts traded on Wednesday, jumping nearly 50% from the previous day. Call options account for 75% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $18 strike call option expiring December 29 $GME 20231229 18.0 CALL$, with 7,572 contracts trading. Meanwhile, the $17.5 strike call option expiring December 29 $GME 20231229 17.5 CALL$ surged 226.75% on Wednesday.
Li Auto rose 3.72% on Wednesday as it sold 12,100 units between December 18 and December 24, another impressive sales numbers in the latest weekly report.
There were 35.48K Li Auto option contracts traded on Wednesday. Call options account for 80% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $37 strike call option expiring December 29 $LI 20231229 37.0 CALL$, with 8,420 contracts trading. Meanwhile, the $37.5 strike call option expiring December 29 $LI 20231229 37.5 CALL$ surged 150% on Wednesday.
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.
Top 10 bullish stocks: Pfizer, John Deere, Freeport-McMoRan, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, Qualcomm, Ansys, Marathon, First Solar, KeyCorp
Top 10 bearish stocks: Apple, Amazon.com, Intel, Citigroup, Ford, NVIDIA Corp, Kenvue Inc, Nike, Uber, Carnival
Based on option delta volume, traders bought a net equivalent of 419,117 shares of Pfizer stock. The largest bullish delta came from buying calls. The largest delta volume came from the 29-Dec-23 28 Call $PFE 20231229 28.0 CALL$, with traders getting long 545,563 deltas on the single option contract.
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