IPO

CoreWeave (CRWV.US) options traded 941,800 contracts on Thursday, Oct. 22, split 505,500 calls to 436,300 puts, for a put/call ratio of 0.86 against a 20-day average of 0.74. Total volume ran at 1.90 times the 20-day average of 494,700 contracts. The call book came in at 1.84 times its own average and the put book at 1.98 times, so puts expanded faster than calls.

The large trades

The screen requires 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. Within five expiries and 120 contracts whose strikes sit about ±0.7% to ±13.3% from the close, 15 trades qualified for $16.74 million in premium: 10 calls worth $12.35 million and five puts worth $4.39 million. Call premium was 73.8% of the total, so both the count and the dollars leaned to the call side. The largest put trade was $1.73 million in the Nov. 20 $56 put, leaving neither side one-way.

Trades worth flagging

All three contracts traded far above their existing open interest, at 9.79, 13.08 and 11.75 times. That pattern points to newly opened exposure rather than a rotation of existing positions. The next session's open interest will confirm it.

Both Oct. 30 calls did their heaviest volume between 11:00 and 11:30 a.m. ET, at 24% and 37% of the session. On direction, the tape sample for the $60 call covers 11:20 a.m. to 3:59 p.m. ET, or 51% of the day. Within the final 1,000 prints, 62% went off at the ask, and the largest print in that sample was 479 contracts, also at the ask. The $59 call sample spans 9:30 a.m. to 3:59 p.m. ET, the whole session. There, 62% of prints went off at the bid, and its largest print of 1,174 contracts crossed at 11:16 a.m. ET at the bid. The $56 put sample covers 9:49 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. ET, and 95% of prints there went off at the ask. Those shares apply only to their own sample windows.

Open interest and volatility

Open interest totalled 3.9646 million contracts, above the upper end of the 20-day range and 1.38 times the average of 2.8753 million. Calls accounted for 1.9411 million and puts 2.0236 million, a put/call open interest ratio of 1.04 versus an average of 0.93. Within the screened universe, the heaviest call open interest sits at the $60 strike (9,615 contracts) and the heaviest put open interest at $50 (37,924). The put strike is the larger of the two by a wide margin, and together they mark the range the options market is pricing around.

Thirty-day at-the-money implied volatility, taken as the average of the Nov. 20 $56 call and put, finished at 113.6%, while historical volatility on the same contract was 87.8%. Using the 85% straddle convention, straddle pricing on the Nov. 20 expiry implies a move of roughly ±21.8%, a band of $43 to $68.

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 5 expiries 7 to 90 days out, with strikes about ±0.7% to ±13.3% 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.