https://external-preview.redd.it/Skg44WbiEYnU2H3lWDYFcn7yEjAKdnQefNdP0lzNQkM.jpg?auto=webp&s=d3c164f08e598981817f6e4a258e2be6411377e3
Idk if I’m just regarded or what but I came across this Bloomberg article today where an analyst at Wells Fargo believes that the mid day swing on the s & p 500 was caused buy a very large options call order being placed. Basically he believes that in order to sell this call, the entity behind the transaction would have to buy tons of underlying assets to cover their risk, and thus the reason why the spy bounce 5% after opening down 2%. Here’s where it gets interesting…(quoted from yahoo finance) “The trade included buying 20,000 S&P 500 calls expiring in October with a strike price of 4,500 and 14,000 bullish contracts expiring in March at a strike of 4,300, while selling 48,000 calls maturing in January with an exercise price at 4,500 — a bet that essentially says stocks would rally in coming months” Idk about you guys but this one quite frankly doesn’t make any sense from a single investment standpoint. Why would someone buy 20k calls expiring this month at a near all time high for spy. Even if it reaches 4500 at eom, which is a fucking stretch at this point, the investor is only breaking even if not expiring worthless. The 14,000 contracts expiring in March at 4300 seem at least somewhat more reasonable if their is somehow a soft landing in 2023 but are still questionable as to why someone would spend so much seemingly very risky calls. The 48,000 sold expiring in Jan seems like the most reasonable play as they at least will collect some premium probably. To me if what this analyst at WF is saying is true and the market was swung by this trade then this seems like a very blatant manipulation of the index. Both sides of this trade would have had to take on massive positions in the underlying to cover their respective sold calls or else they would be left naked. I’m not even really seeing the point of this trade if it is to profit cause it’s a ton of risk for hardly any reward. I would like to hear from the big boy iron condor chasing degenerates on this one is this just another Bill Hwang, is someone trying to boost market to cover larger separate position, is Nancy Pelosi throwing up some big bucks for bull run for dems just in time for midterms or am I missing something here? You decide!
Link to free version of the original Bloomberg [article](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-big-option-trade-fueled-193109433.html)
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Spitballing here: here’s a whale who’s balls are in the blender in another S&P trade. They swing for the fences, trying to pry themselves loose by juicing the mkt with both a bullish narrative which is leaked to the media and the price action itself, to the upside with a weird calendar call spread. The long calls, which are the hedge for the shorts can be rolled out as needed, as they pull their balls out of some over leveraged s&p correlated trade. The media does zero investigation these days so it was a tip placed for narrative purposes with a yahoo finance contact. Financial media is used this way all the time. Anyhoo, there’s probably good reasons why I’m wrong but the one thing I’m sure of, the story wasn’t from sleuthing, it was a ‘hey, want to see something weird?’ and from their ears to your eyes.
I have no thoughts other than this is fascinating as hell. Will watch this post for comments and not-too-secretly wish I had picked a different major at university.
Hmm I am wondering if I am screwed with my Put expiring 10/12 $363?
Edit ✍️: if we open red Tomorrow I’ll minimize my loss from my current -40% and pick up a call if we witness consolidation incase there is a another – Green Day.
Edit ✍️: down to -18% plan on HODLing my Put until next week
My thoughts: In order to sell the far leg, he/she had to buy on the near leg. When the near leg comes close to maturity he/she will need to roll it into the future or close out the far leg
It’s a trap
I read something recently about this. Iirc the theory is that since market makers are supposed to remain “delta neutral”, when they sell far-dated OTM calls, they buy shares to manage their risk and remain “delta neutral.” It can also be referred to as “delta hedging.” So, when they take these long positions to manage their risk, the buying can cause the price to rise.
Plunge protection team. Who else could waste that kind of money? Helping the banks kick the can.
I saw this as well, the whale is going to lose a lot of money..
But maybe the whale had tons of bags to pump
Could be a hedge for an even more massive short position.
Either a Fed pivot BEFORE their scheduled meeting, or the war miraculously ends. That’s about all that could send this bitch 17% before end of month. Betting on a one month, 17% bounce in the spy is fucking nuts.
I’ll look it up soon, but do you know what the total premium was on each of the trades? Could definitely also be about collecting the premium from the sold calls, and protecting them by holding offsetting calls.
Posted this also at: [https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/xwsqki/one_big_option_trade_fueled_sp_500s_midday_jump/](https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/xwsqki/one_big_option_trade_fueled_sp_500s_midday_jump/)
BTW, OP… Please use paragraphs and white lines between. Is very dense and hard to read what you wrote.
It could be someone expects market going into a high tight flag pattern
Those eom calls were probly cheap enough that they can take profit from a post CPI rally, *before* expiration. Those short calls mean they think a dump will happen after the midterms. The further out longs will be profitable on the IV if they get their pump and dump from the first 2. Its aggressive, thats for sure.
I mean, maybe some rich guy literally thinks we are at the bottom…. And hes sooooo fucked. Still doesn’t make that much sense though with such a short expiration on it. We’ve clearly found alien life in the dark universal abyss and its about to hit news headlines that they are on our side!
Edit: On a serious note, unless I have mistaken something, 20,000 calls at 4500 at the end of October is rougly $650,000, thats practically nothing.
Watch SPY time and sales, I’ve seen billions of dollars in orders on there.
Europe is QE-ing our market for us!
Any Idea on cost of the spread ? this may be to juice up their existing positions. They must have already exited equivalent delta positions in equity and now loaded with same delta uisng options. MMs would have taken other side by buying offsetting ES contracts. It quite possible MMs algo buying ES futures could have caused today’s rally. final hour selling also felt kinda fishy.
sorry, cat ran across my keyboard.
Could it be an internal arrangement or manipulation wherein a whale sells call options to another whale just to cause a gamma squeeze? The premium can be returned in some other way?