This week’s volatility is on par with last week.
There was a large bearish bull put spread opened: selling the 175 put $NVDA 20250815 175.0 PUT$ and buying the 172.5 put $NVDA 20250815 172.5 PUT$ for protection.
Currently, large bullish positions are split on whether NVDA can break above 200 before earnings.
Expect this week’s close to be similar to last week—unless there’s a short squeeze, odds are we’ll finish in the 180–185 range.
Big bullish orders continue, including a rare short-term large buy on the 380 call expiring August 29 $TSLA 20250829 380.0 CALL$ with 13,800 contracts opened.
Institutional spread strategies—previously -330 call +350 call—have been forced to roll to -355 call +375 call.
On the bullish put side, there was a major sale of the December 19 340 put $TSLA 20251219 340.0 PUT$ , with a notional value of $37.5 million.
Similar to Friday’s big sale of the 320 put $TSLA 20251017 320.0 PUT$ , the logic is that strike minus premium is around 300—meaning institutions still respect the 300 support.
The key focus for earnings is whether they can beat quarter-on-quarter expectations, which may be tough. Last quarter, revenue was up 420% year-on-year, and full-year guidance was raised to $4.9–5.1 billion.
Even more important than earnings is the August 14 lockup expiration.
Earnings-related flows show 11,000 contracts opened for the August 22 120 put $CRWV 20250822 120.0 PUT$ , mostly buy-to-open.
Worth noting: this was a big roll order, with traders closing the August 29 120 put and rolling to the August 22 120 put.
$VanEck Semiconductor ETF(SMH)$
A large bearish put spread was rolled from the September 19 expiry -270+250 to the September 12 expiry -285+262.5:
Buy $SMH 20250912 285.0 PUT$ , sell $SMH 20250912 262.5 PUT$ .
This can be seen as hedging as the range moves up, though I don’t really get why they would bring the expiry forward—doesn’t the September 17 FOMC seem worth hedging for?
Today’s trade: sold puts on $NVDA 20250822 175.0 PUT$ .
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