I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.Intel put volume rose to 1.27 times its 20-day average and the put/call ratio reached 0.70, above its 0.55 average, while the screen's 10 qualifying trades clustered in the Oct. 30 $90 call.
Intel (INTC.US) options traded 998,082 contracts on the Oct. 22 session, 587,833 calls against 410,249 puts, a put/call ratio of 0.70. That ratio sits above the 20-day average of 0.55 but still inside the baseline range of 0.38 to 0.78.
Total volume ran at 1.10 times the 20-day average of 910,016 contracts. Call volume matched its average of 585,786 almost exactly, at 1.00 times, so the increase came from the put side, where volume reached 1.27 times the average of 324,230.
Open interest (OI) totalled 6,750,347 contracts, 1.06 times the average of 6,341,127. Calls made up 3,529,085 of that and puts 3,221,262, for a put/call open interest ratio of 0.91 against an average of 0.92, also inside the range.
The large trades
Ten trades cleared the screen: nine calls totalling $10.38 million and one put at $383,000. The criteria were full-session volume of at least 500 contracts, premium of at least $100,000, a volume-to-open-interest ratio of 2.0 or higher, 7 to 90 days to expiration and an absolute delta between 0.15 and 0.80. The scan covered the 120 contracts across four expiries inside that window. Contracts above the vol/OI threshold were mostly calls.
The three heaviest-volume contracts in the same universe all sat on the put side. The Nov. 20 $90 put traded 12,801 contracts for $10.44 million in premium, a vol/OI of 0.47. The Nov. 20 $80 put traded 14,037 contracts at a vol/OI of 0.60. Both traded less than their own open interest, which is closer to turnover of existing positions than to the concentration the screen found on the call side.
Trades worth flagging
| Contract | Full-session volume | Largest print | Open interest | Vol/OI | Premium | Side |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct. 30 $90 call | 8,396 | 491 | 2,396 | 3.50 | $2.78M | at the bid |
| Oct. 30 $88 call | 6,399 | 250 | 148 | 43.24 | $2.69M | at the ask |
| Nov. 20 $87 call | 2,131 | 309 | 89 | 23.94 | $1.41M | at the ask |
All three carried a vol/OI above 2, and each traded more than its existing open interest, which points to newly opened exposure rather than a rotation of existing positions. Direction will need the next session's open interest change to confirm. The Oct. 30 $88 call had the highest ratio, 6,399 contracts against 148 in open interest. The Oct. 30 $90 call ran 8,396 against 2,396, and the Nov. 20 $87 call 2,131 against 89.
Direction inside the tape sample was not consistent. In the final 1,000 prints of the Oct. 30 $90 call, covering 11:26 a.m. to 3:59 p.m. ET and totalling 6,007 contracts, 72% of full-session volume, 67% went off at the bid. The largest print in that sample was 491 contracts at $3.30, flagged at the bid at 1:46 p.m. ET. The Oct. 30 $88 call saw 61% of its final 656 prints, covering 9:30 a.m. to 3:59 p.m. ET, go off at the bid; 35 prints were 50 contracts or larger, and the three largest were each 250 contracts. The Nov. 20 $87 call ran the other way: 87% of its final 187 prints went off at the ask, and its largest sample print was 309 contracts at the ask at 1:42 p.m. ET. Its full-session volume clustered between 1:30 and 2 p.m. ET, when that half hour accounted for 74% of the day's volume.
Open interest and volatility
Across expiries in the screened universe, the three strikes with the heaviest call open interest were $90 at 12,809 contracts, $80 at 12,314 and $85 at 7,666. On the put side the heaviest were $90 at 40,075, $85 at 38,161 and $80 at 34,580. Put open interest at each of those three strikes was more than twice the call count at the same strike. On both measures the weight sits between $80 and $90, the range the options market is pricing around.
The 30-day at-the-money implied volatility (IV) reading was 68.8%, taken from the average of the Nov. 20 $85 call and put, 20.6 percentage points above the 48.2% historical volatility of the same contracts. Using the 85% straddle convention, the Nov. 20 expiry implies a move of roughly ±13.2%, a band of $74 to $97.
How to read this, and how not to
A large call trade is not, by itself, evidence that institutions are bullish. The same fill can come from a covered-call writer, one leg of a spread, or a hedge against a long stock position. Direction needs at least three confirmations: whether the trade went off at the bid or the ask, whether open interest rises the following session, and whether the opposing strike saw size at the same time. This article reports publicly available trade data and the screen used to select it. It is not investment advice.
Source: publicly reported U.S. options trades. Coverage window: regular U.S. trading hours, Oct. 22, 2026. Universe: 120 contracts across four expiries within 7 to 90 days to expiration, strikes roughly ±7.6% to ±10.0% from the close. Screen: full-session volume of at least 500 contracts, premium of at least $100,000, volume-to-open-interest ratio of 2.0 or higher; 7 to 90 days to expiration; absolute delta between 0.15 and 0.80.