U.S. stocks closed down on Tuesday (Dec 17) as investors parsed economic data and girded themselves for a series of central bank decisions, including an expected rate cut from the Federal Reserve.

Regarding the options market, a total volume of 44,218,449 contracts was traded on Tuesday.

Top 10 Option Volumes

Top 10: NVDA; TSLA; VIX; AAPL; AVGO; PLTR; AMD; GME; AMZN; MSTR

Source: Tiger Trade App

Nvidia stock fell 1.2% on Tuesday after closing in correction territory — defined by many on Wall Street as a 10% or more drop from a most recent high on Monday. Nvidia is off 11.34% from its 52-week closing high of $148.88 reached on Nov. 7, and off 13.66% from a record intraday high of $152.89 seen Nov. 21, according to Dow Jones Market Data. But Nvidia also had a correction bout this summer, and bounced back.

The AI chip maker's shares have closed lower in the last seven of eight sessions, down 4.5% drop for December, though still up 166% year to date.

A total number of 3.85 million options related to Nvidia was traded, of which 64% were call options. Market sentiment for Nvidia turned bullish after recent declines. Based on option delta volume, traders bought a net equivalent of 4,853,808 shares of Nvidia stock. The largest bullish delta came from buying calls.

Source: Market Chameleon

Unusual Options Activity

Source: Market Chameleon

Quantum Computing stock rockets 51.53% on Tuesday. Quantum Computing Inc. has secured a prime contract from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to apply its Dirac-3 entropy quantum optimization machine for phase unwrapping in interferometric data processing. The project aims to enhance NASA's imaging reconstruction and data processing capabilities using QCi's quantum optimization technology.

The contract focuses on utilizing Dirac-3 to solve complex phase unwrapping problems in radar-generated interferometric data, with the goal of improving solution quality and computational speed compared to classical computing methods. If successful, the project could yield long-term benefits for NASA's big-data processing capabilities and potentially expand to other applications where quantum solutions offer advantages.

A total number of 248,028 options related to Quantum Computing was traded, 25.6 times higher than the 90-day average trading volume. A particularly high volume was seen for the $18 strike call option expiring this Friday, with 17,426 contracts trading as of Tuesday.

$QUBT 20241220 18.0 CALL$

TOP Bullish & Bearish Single Stocks

This report shows stocks with the highest volume of bullish and bearish activity by option delta volume, which converts option volume to an equivalent stock volume (bought or sold).

If we take the total positive option delta volume and subtract the total negative option delta volume, we will get the net imbalance. If the net imbalance is positive, there is more bullish pressure. If the net is negative, there is more bearish pressure.

Top 10 bullish stocks: NVDA; TSLA; AAPL; HBAN; UBER; PFE; META; MU; SMCI; MDT

Top 10 bearish stocks: CRM; GOOGL; AMZN; AMD; T; XOM; GOOG; BA; DVN; WMT

Source: Market Chameleon

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