Options traders can’t get enough of semiconductor stocks. No matter how high the stock price rises or how expensive the options become, bulls will just continue to flood the space.
After a 700% rally over the past year, traders rushed into options on Micron on Tuesday, paying a hefty premium for further upside in the legacy memory chip maker, which has become one of the hottest AI trades on the market over the past year.
As of noon Chicago time on Tuesday, more than $2.8 billion in Micron options premium had been traded, more than the dollar volume of index ETFs SPY and QQQ combined. Micron accounted for 12 of the top 20 options traded in the hour after the opening bell, according to SpotGamma data. This is a great achievement for a stock with no major news flow and earnings results only a few months away.
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Micron since the beginning of the year
The call volume is higher than the stock’s puts, and the premium on the call appears small compared to the amount paid on the put. More calls were bought than sold and more puts were sold than bought on Tuesday, with the stock’s implied volatility rising to 84, about five times the S&P 500’s volatility, according to ThinkOrSwim.
Buyers of the calls ranged from deep-in-the-money to out-of-the-money strikes, with the biggest trades leaning toward later expiration trades betting on sustained movement in Micron, which has a market cap of more than $700 billion.
Confidence in Micron was echoed by traders in related stocks such as SanDisk and Western Digital, with call buying dominating the trade as both stocks hit record highs.
In another major market capitalization milestone, Intel on Tuesday surpassed its dotcom value after a 13% rise, bringing its one-year stock price up more than 430% and approaching a $550 billion valuation.
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Inter since the beginning of the year
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