好柿花生Option

Recently noticed a piece of news: Wall Street says US refinery profits could triple this quarter — with the conflict in Iran and shipping stuck in the Strait of Hormuz, refineries in the Middle East and Asia can't run at full capacity, while US refineries can sell gasoline and diesel at high prices. The nationwide refinery utilization rate hit 96% in the week of 7/10. A usually overlooked "sunset" corner of the market has suddenly been ignited by geopolitics. Against this backdrop, $Valero Energy Corp New(VLO.US) has been performing strongly. On 7/14, its stock price surged to a new all-time high...

Storage and chips are both ignited by AI demand. Last night, Western Digital surged 5% intraday and closed at $563. SanDisk and Micron from the same batch were even more aggressive. In the options market, someone spent about $5.56 million to buy 1,855 contracts of $650 strike price Calls expiring on 7/31. This is a bet that Western Digital will rise significantly further within two weeks. Based on the premium, the cost per share is roughly $30, and the break-even point is at $680—meaning it needs to rise over 20% from the current $563 before this trade starts making real money. I agree with the direction of this trade...

I've been following Bolong Energy since June: On June 5th, when it skidded 9%, I followed the institutions buying Calls in the market and took a long position; On June 22nd, when it surged to $346 hitting a new high, but nearly ten million dollars worth of Puts emerged in the late session, I reversed and turned bearish, saying if it couldn't move at the high level, I'd exit. Looking back now, that short bet was right: the stock price has dropped all the way from $346 in late June to $233 at yesterday's (7/13) close, losing about 30% in just over a month...

Last Friday $Meta Platforms(META.US) closed at 669.21, up +5.97% for the day. Over two trading days, it surged from 603 on 7/8 to 669, a gain of nearly +10%. In pre-market trading on Monday, it dipped slightly to 667.91, basically holding on to the gains. A flurry of news came out pre-market: Meta announced an additional $40 billion investment in its data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, bringing the total investment for this project to over $50 billion...

TSMC is about to release its earnings report. Last night, the stock price basically didn't move, but there was a rather noteworthy option trade in the market — at 12:33 EST (Beijing time 7/10 00:33), someone bought 600 calls expiring on 7/31 with a strike price of $460 in one go, throwing in $1.02 million. $460 is about 5% away from the current price, not particularly out-of-the-money, and the 7/31 expiration date perfectly covers the earnings report on 7/16. This is most likely a bet targeting the earnings report — gambling that TSMC's upcoming report can push the stock price above $460...

Storage had a fix last night, and I'm also keeping an eye on the specific option movements. Recently, I've also been looking at $Dell Tech(DELL.US). This stock was actually quite battered last week. On 7/2, it dropped from 422 to 394 in a single day, closing down -7%. The AI server chain was hit along with semiconductors. But in just a few days, it has pulled back to 431.97, even touching 438.25 in pre-market. The catalyst was the quarterly earnings report that day—revenue exceeded expectations, and free cash flow surged 313% year-over-year, a very solid cash flow data point. Last night, about ten minutes after the market opened...

Last Wednesday I was still watching a deep out-of-the-money LEAPS call on SanDisk expiring in 2027. Yesterday's article said to wait for the after-hours low of 1689 to be broken intraday to confirm the short position—but last night SanDisk's stock price opened directly at 1619, plunged to 1485 during the session, and closed at 1617. From the high of 2273 at the end of June, it's lost nearly 30% in six trading days. SanDisk and Micron have officially been pushed into a technical bear market. The catalysts are still those few major events: Samsung's earnings forecast miss, the market starting to argue "has the memory cycle peaked?", and SK Hynix's upcoming US listing diverting funds...

Last Wednesday when I was looking at SanDisk, there was still a $10.39 million deep out-of-the-money LEAPS Call order that came in against the trend at the end of the session, with a strike price of 2800 and an expiration date of March 2027, clearly betting that the storage super cycle could last all the way to the year after next. At that time, it looked more like a long-term odds bet for the year after next, and I didn't take it too seriously—I didn't expect the situation to completely reverse later: it dropped 14% in a single day on July 2nd, closed at 1744 on July 6th, and from the intraday high of 2335 on June 25th, it has already shrunk by a quarter in just four days...

On July 1st, there were two orders in Tesla's intraday trading that looked quite interesting when viewed together: In the morning session, the $470 Call expiring on August 7th was swept four times in a row, building up to nearly $2.9 million. Then, close to noon, another order for a $440 at-the-money Call with the same expiration was added. The money committed to the out-of-the-money leg was nearly ten times heavier than the at-the-money leg. What's intriguing is the positioning—Tesla had already surged from just over 380 to around 425 over the past three trading days, with $470 still hanging more than 10% above. This isn't bottom-fishing...

This recent roller coaster ride in the semiconductor sector has me feeling uneasy: ARM has been steadily declining from 407 on 6/22, and on 6/26 the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index crashed over 5% in a single day. ARM briefly touched 326 intraday and closed at 334, losing nearly 20% in just four trading sessions. Then, on 6/30, it rebounded following AMD's server CPU rally. Some people started moving in the market—in the options flow, three ARM Buy Calls were all placed on the $390, 7/24 expiry contract, totaling 6.27M, 2616 contracts...

Last night, $AMD(AMD.US) was the brightest spot in the chip rebound, surging to $542 intraday and closing up 3.43% at $539. However, looking at the options flow, the largest short position in the entire market was also placed on it—five Buy Put orders totaling about $10 million, making it the top short position of the day. The stock with the strongest rally had the heaviest bearish bets hanging behind it, which is worth analyzing. First, let's see how these Put options were structured. The near-term ones are $495 and $530 at-the-money Puts expiring on 7/2...

Last Friday $Alibaba(BABA.US) performed very poorly. Before the market opened, due to news of ARK's share reduction, it once fell by 3.42%, gapping down to $92 and touching $91.99 intraday. The Hang Seng Index also fell by 1.755% that day. Looking at the daily chart more intuitively: the stock price has been declining steadily from $107.44 on 6/17 to close at $94.81 on 6/26, falling by nearly 12% over seven trading days. On such a day when everyone was calling for a decline and ARK was selling, two significantly bullish orders appeared in the options market...

Recently, the optical module sector has been on a rollercoaster ride, and I've been keeping a close eye on it. $Lumentum(LITE.US) still dropped 8–9% in a single day on 6/23, then rebounded with the optical communications sector to close up +2.3% on 6/25. As it turned out, at 09:46 during the morning session that day, someone dumped $2.26M (502 contracts) into the $900 Call, with an expiration of 7/10, only 15 days away. First, let's lay out the contract: Buy Call, strike price $900, expiration 2026-07-10, DTE 15...

After the market closed yesterday, I was looking through the options flow, and one operation by $Lam Research(LRCX.US) caught my attention—someone in the market built a structure in two steps: 'using the money from selling Puts to buy calls one year out.' Then that night, Micron's earnings report blew up, and the stock price soared 7% in after-hours trading. The timing was just too perfect. The stock had just hit a new high a few days ago. On 6/23, the entire semiconductor sector pulled back along with the memory chain, and it dropped 9% in a single day, which was quite scary. On 6/24, it stabilized during the trading day, but after hours, Micron's Q3 earnings far exceeded expectations—semiconductor equipment companies, as the direct beneficiaries of 'selling shovels'...

Recently, $Bloom Energy(BE.US) has been incredibly strong. On 6/18, a single $5 billion AI data center power supply order sent it up +11% in a day, directly hitting a new 52-week high. On 6/22, it rose another nearly 6%, closing at $345.85 (+5.15%), with an intraday high of $349.99. The narrative of AI's power shortage and fuel cells powering data centers is really compelling right now. But just last night, while watching the options flow, I saw something odd: all three large orders for BE that day were buying Puts...

Storage has been a hot topic for the past few months, and I've been keeping a close eye on it. Early this morning, I saw a remarkable order on $Western Digital(WDC.US): someone sold 500 puts expiring on 7/17 with a strike price of $510 in one go, with a premium of $2.58 million, averaging $51.6 per contract—a near-the-money put collecting $51.6, which is 10% of the strike price, with an absurdly high IV. This guy is basically telling the whole market: I'm willing to take delivery of Western Digital at $510 and also collect a hefty rent in the process...

## NVIDIA Breaks Below $200, I Followed Institutions to Sell Puts on $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) The stock price has been looking terrible recently—falling all the way from 222.8 to just over 200. On the 9th and 10th, the price dipped to 199.34 and 199.92, just a hair's breadth away from breaking through 200. But the options market tells a completely different story: At 12:37 PM ET on 6/9, someone bought 1,959 $205 Calls expiring on 6/17, spending $744,000...

Last night, there was a very interesting set of option orders for $Oracle(ORCL.US): At 10:14 AM ET, a $225 Call order for $2.42 million, 2,049 contracts, expiring on 6/26; nine minutes later at 22:23 and 22:32, two consecutive $215 Call orders totaling $2.64 million, 1,725 contracts, also expiring on 6/26, with only 1.4% out-of-the-money at the time of execution, almost at-the-money; at 1:00 PM, another short-term $212.5 order for $517,000 expiring on 6/18 was added. Three strike prices, $5.58 million...

Recently watching the overnight options flow, the orders for $Tesla(TSLA.US) last night were quite noteworthy. Looking at the five trades (Beijing time): At 21:30, first sold one $402.50 Call, receiving 92k; at 22:59, spent 692k to buy one $380 Put expiring on 7/10; then at 23:31, 00:42, and 03:03, consecutively sold three near-month Puts at $395, $400, and $410, collecting a total of 665k...

Riding on the narrative that "the ultimate destination of AI is power," $Bloom Energy(BE.US)'s stock price has doubled in the past two months. Data centers are frantically competing for power, and fuel cells are being seen as a new solution to bypass the grid queue. However, last Friday, the stock price directly dropped nearly 10%, and it's still grinding lower in pre-market today. What actually collapsed wasn't the logic: power shortages, data centers scrambling for electricity, SOFC substitution—this entire story remains intact. I personally think it's just that the rise was too fast and too much, coupled with the entire tech stock sell-off last Friday, which evaporated trillions in market value in a single day. It's just high-position holders taking profits and exiting first...

I've been keeping a close eye on $Broadcom(AVGO.US) lately, and the more I look, the more interesting it gets. The earnings report came out, and the stock price directly crashed by 12.6%, evaporating $286B in market cap in a single day, making it the fourth-largest single-day market cap loss in U.S. stock history (it's still falling in pre-market now). The reason for the crash isn't poor performance: Q2 revenue was $22.2B, up 48% year-over-year, AI revenue was $10.8B, next quarter guidance is $29.4B, and they're still holding onto about $30B in AI orders—the numbers are actually pretty strong...

$ASML(ASML.US) was absolutely god-like last night—closed at 1726 on 6/3, intraday hit 1743 to set a new all-time high, market cap now number one in all of Europe, JP Morgan raised the target price directly to 2200, everyone was shouting "lithography machine forever god". But the options flow on the same day sent a chill down my spine: someone dumped $13.59 million in two batches to buy Puts, all concentrated at 1700. The far-end July batch of $9.02 million is twice as heavy as the near-end June batch of $4.56 million—this isn't temporary hedging, it's someone seriously betting on a pullback...

Today, I saw in the options unusual activity data that $Strategy(MSTR.US) had the "largest short position of the day at $5.5M". My first thought was that someone made a heavy bet shorting Saylor, but upon closer look, it turned out someone was naked selling Puts to collect premium, which got reported as a "short position". Let me break down this trade: at 13:39 someone bought $131 Puts for $4.88M, and at 13:40 immediately sold $133 Puts for $5.76M, just a minute apart, a matched pair...

Last week, when $Microsoft(MSFT.US) stock was at 427, I noticed Microsoft's options. Today in pre-market, the stock price has surged to 464 in one go. The Build conference is tomorrow, but this is actually the time to restrain yourself. Chasing the same logic at different price points is completely different. My previous logic for looking at Microsoft was sound: institutions dumped $9.2 million on $440 Calls in one day, over ten thousand contracts. Build is also a known catalyst. At that time, following a $430/$450 shrunken spread, close to at-the-money, low cost, covering Build, it was reasonable...

I've been a bit obsessed with watching the options for $Microsoft(MSFT.US) these past couple of days. Yesterday, the underlying stock rose 3.5% to close at $426.99, and it continued to climb to 427.69 after hours; but the options trade was even more shocking: the $440 Call expiring on 6/26 was swept up for $9.2 million, over ten thousand contracts, making it the largest bullish trade of the day. I checked: Microsoft is holding its Build conference next week, and The Information says it will release its self-developed code model...