SK Hynix Options Debut as Top Trades Go Bearish
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- SK Hynix options debuted Tuesday on Cboe, with about 150,000 contracts traded by midday across five monthly expiries (July, August, September, December, and March 2027), despite a 20%-plus single-day surge in the underlying stock.
- SK Hynix options volume topped the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) at 110,000 contracts and roughly doubled Sandisk or Marvell, but was less than a third of Micron's ~380,000 contracts and a fraction of Nvidia's 2.3 million.
- Leveraged single-stock ETFs tied to SK Hynix — nearly a dozen filed by issuers — began trading on Tuesday, with the Roundhill memory ETF (DRAM, $23 billion in assets and SK Hynix as its third-largest holding) credited with absorbing speculative demand.
- Prosper Trading Academy CEO Scott Bauer said double-long and double-short ETFs diverted call demand but predicted a volume pickup once weekly SK Hynix options list.
- The session's two biggest trades appeared to be a single trader selling more than 2,200 SK Hynix 180-strike July 17 calls at roughly $9 apiece, a ~$2 million bearish sale.
- Cboe LiveVol data showed the top seven single SK Hynix option trades by volume were all bearish, with selling calls the most popular directional trade despite more calls than puts changing hands overall.
Why it matters: Despite a 20%-plus surge in SK Hynix shares, the options debut was dominated by bearish flow — the top seven trades by volume were all call sales — suggesting sophisticated traders are hedging or fading the rally rather than chasing it, while the $23 billion DRAM ETF and a wave of new leveraged single-stock products are reshaping where speculative money sits in this name.
