On the eve of the earnings report, Apple options exhibit unusual market behavior

On June 25, 2026, a store in downtown Manhattan, New York, displayed the Apple brand logo.

The U.S. stock market has been sluggish for two consecutive months, with U.S. Treasury yields reaching new highs, and the latest earnings reports from Google's parent company Alphabet and Tesla falling short of expectations. Bulls urgently need a leader to support the market.

Apple is highly anticipated. Among the top ten weighted stocks in the S&P 500 index, only Apple's stock price is just a stone's throw away from its all-time high.

In the previous seven months, Apple's stock price has been fluctuating sideways, and since the low point at the end of June, it has risen 20%. The current stock price is less than $2 lower than the all-time high set just over a week ago.

Apple will disclose its earnings report after the U.S. stock market closes on Thursday. Based on the trading volume before last Friday's close and the overall options open interest data this summer, options traders are betting on a continuation of Apple's recent strength: large institutional investors are buying in-the-money call options, and many speculators are wagering that the stock price will hit a new all-time high before this Friday.

Apple's U.S. stock quote: regular closing price $333.02; after-hours quote $334.15, up $1.13, an increase of 0.34%; after-hours high increased by $11.36, an increase of 3.53%.

Options Detailed Data

According to SpotGamma, the total premium transaction scale of Apple options last Friday was $590 million, of which call options accounted for $442 million. Trading software ThinkOrSwim data shows that traders bought nearly 560,000 call options, while put options only traded 332,000 contracts.

A more critical point calculated by the Chicago Board Options Exchange Cboe LiveVol: the current implied volatility of options pricing suggests that the stock price could fluctuate nearly 4% after the earnings report; however, the average volatility of Apple's earnings reports over the past year was only 1%, making this expected volatility unusually large.

Nigham Arora, founder of the Arora Investment Newsletter, stated: "I believe Apple is likely to stabilize the market this week. Investors view Apple as a defensive stock because, unlike many peers, Apple has not thrown out hundreds of billions of dollars into AI capital expenditures."

Last Friday, the largest single options trade for Apple: a trader spent $2.6 million to establish a long position in call options with a strike price of $280, expiring in mid-August. The Delta value of this contract is close to 1, making it deep in-the-money, and the holding effect is almost equivalent to directly holding the stock, representing a typical bullish operation using options as a substitute for stock holdings.

According to the market website BarChart, among the options expiring this Friday, the strike price of $320 has the highest open interest: 13,000 call options and 5,000 put options. This indicates that even if the earnings report does not drive an increase, investors are generally confident that last week's low will not be broken SpotGamma data shows that the highest volume contract last Friday was the $300 strike price put options, with 7,500 contracts traded and a total premium of only $374,000; the second highest volume was the $340 strike price call options, with 5,000 contracts traded and a total premium of $2.3 million.

As of last Friday's close, the $340 call option was quoted at $4.25 per contract. To profit from exercising, Apple needs to rise 3.4% this week, breaking through the historical high of $335