AI Options Traders Pile Into Intel, AMD With Bullish Bets After Fed — SkimNews
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- S&P 500 added more than 1% Thursday with 10 of 11 sectors rallying, while Cboe's volatility gauge dropped over two points to 15.4 — its lowest in a week — after the Fed's first rate hike since 2023.
- Intel saw more than 1.3 million options trade Thursday, nearly three times its monthly average, with $231 million of the $320 million in buyer-initiated premium tied to call contracts; the stock has rallied 35% off its summer low amid reported SK Hynix chip-talks.
- AMD options volume ran nearly double its average, with traders likely buying 107,000 calls versus 71,500 puts; the session's biggest trade was an $8.3 million call spread pairing 1,500 550-strike November calls with 1,500 750-strike June calls, breaking even if AMD rallies past $615 by November.
- Crowdstrike attracted bullish flows, with the most popular contract being the 250-strike call expiring Friday — a $2 trade needing just another 2% to break even — as the stock sits up 120% over the past year.
- SpaceX trading volume also surged with over $1.5 billion in premium changing hands, though $1.1 billion was tied to puts; roughly 60% of that put premium stemmed from large sellers, including a single sale of 41,000 205-strike Friday puts for over $200 million.
- The call-put skew showed market-makers pricing calls $2 above at-the-money puts, a spread pointing to elevated demand for upside exposure across the AI tech complex.
Why it matters: Intel's options volume nearly tripled its monthly average with 72% of buyer premium tied to calls, suggesting traders are positioning for continued upside as the chipmaker extends a 35% rally off its summer low. The SpaceX put activity, despite being framed as bullish, was dominated by $1.1 billion in put premium — indicating hedging or profit-taking on the stock's July high rather than fresh bullish conviction.
Ask SkimNews
