Has the Call Option Whale Been Taking the Market Higher?
(Bloomberg)
While the Nasdaq 100 has slipped into the red this afternoon, it’s still doing better than the broad market/SPX, particularly once you beta-adjust it. And its performance over the last week has been torrid, up 7% from last Tuesday’s close.
A popular explanation has been the looming expiry of a number of the call options allegedly purchased by Softbank, or whomever the so-called “whale” may be. The thinking is that dealers are caught short gamma with the options so close to expiry, forcing them to chase the high-flying stocks to hedge their deltas.
I don’t know if this is true, and popular market narratives don’t always hold water. Yes, there are some interesting October open interest figures for some big tech names near current levels. So the story’s at least plausible. Over a somewhat more meaningful time frame, it’s indisputable that there’s been a significant uptick in overall call open interest for tech-stock behemoths.
I downloaded the daily data on total call and put open interest for the 10 largest names in the NDX going back to the start of last year. The chart’s a little lumpy, with open interest falling immediately after expiry days. There were also some obvious errors in the data, which I tried to scrub.
In any event, it looks indisputable that there’s been large increases in open interest in the 10 names (AAPL, MSFT, AMZN, GOOG/L, FB, TSLA, NVDA, ADBE, PYPL and NFLX if you’re too lazy took it up.) The outstanding number of calls rose from less than 12 million in early July to more than 16 million today, having peaked above 18 million before September’s expiry. Over the same time, the outstanding number of puts has remained constant, sending the ratio between the two shooting higher.
(Bloomberg)
While the Nasdaq 100 has slipped into the red this afternoon, it’s still doing better than the broad market/SPX, particularly once you beta-adjust it. And its performance over the last week has been torrid, up 7% from last Tuesday’s close.
A popular explanation has been the looming expiry of a number of the call options allegedly purchased by Softbank, or whomever the so-called “whale” may be. The thinking is that dealers are caught short gamma with the options so close to expiry, forcing them to chase the high-flying stocks to hedge their deltas.
I don’t know if this is true, and popular market narratives don’t always hold water. Yes, there are some interesting October open interest figures for some big tech names near current levels. So the story’s at least plausible. Over a somewhat more meaningful time frame, it’s indisputable that there’s been a significant uptick in overall call open interest for tech-stock behemoths.
I downloaded the daily data on total call and put open interest for the 10 largest names in the NDX going back to the start of last year. The chart’s a little lumpy, with open interest falling immediately after expiry days. There were also some obvious errors in the data, which I tried to scrub.
In any event, it looks indisputable that there’s been large increases in open interest in the 10 names (AAPL, MSFT, AMZN, GOOG/L, FB, TSLA, NVDA, ADBE, PYPL and NFLX if you’re too lazy took it up.) The outstanding number of calls rose from less than 12 million in early July to more than 16 million today, having peaked above 18 million before September’s expiry. Over the same time, the outstanding number of puts has remained constant, sending the ratio between the two shooting higher.