QQQ Put/Call Ratio Hits June High as Options Traders Hedge Tech — SkimNews
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- Nasdaq-100 fell as much as 1.8% on Thursday after the Financial Times reported OpenAI revenues are coming in short, with the put/call ratio on the Invesco QQQ Trust jumping to 1.49 — the highest since the last week of June.
- QQQ's put/call ratio has been trending toward puts since August, even as big-tech stocks climbed to a string of all-time highs through Tuesday, according to Barchart data.
- On Wednesday, the two largest options trades of the session were bearish: one in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and another in Meta Platforms (META), per the report.
- The picture isn't uniformly bearish: the put/call ratio on SPY and the S&P 500 Index (SPX) sits near average, and QQQ's biggest individual trades on Thursday were actually bullish — a $15 million sale of 740-strike March puts at 11 a.m. ET and an $8 million+ purchase of 835-strike March calls needing a 14% rally.
- After the close, sentiment flipped: a $20 million bearish structure — 15,000 January 680-strike puts bought against 15,000 October 760-strike calls sold — was the highest-premium trade of the day.
- Don Kaufman, co-founder of TheoTrade, said neither bonds nor the OpenAI revenue report caused much damage, and that a sustained selloff would need enough selling pressure to turn the market from one that absorbs downside into one that accelerates it.
Why it matters: The QQQ put/call ratio at 1.49 versus near-average SPY/SPX ratios tells a tech-specific story: options traders see the AI complex — rattled by the OpenAI revenue report — as the most vulnerable corner of the market, not equities broadly. If a selloff does come, the accumulated hedges in QQQ could provide a cushion, but the broader market lacks that same built-in downside insurance.
Ask SkimNews
