Wall Street nosedived for a second straight day on Friday (Apr 4) confirming the Nasdaq Composite was in a bear market and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in a correction, as an escalating global trade war spurred the biggest losses since the pandemic.

Regarding the options market, a total volume of 90,731,623 contracts was traded on Friday, put ratio rose above 52%.

Top 10 Option Volumes

Top 10: NVDA; TSLA; AAPL; AMZN; PLTR; AMD; INTC; MSTR; META; HOOD

Source: Tiger Trade App

Options trading volume of big techs rose sharply on Friday as the Magnificent Seven stocks— Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon.com, Meta Platforms, and Alphabet — tumbled Friday after the group shed $1.03 trillion in market capitalization on Thursday, the largest one-day market cap decline on record.

Nvidia stock tumbled 8.8% on Friday. A total number of 7.6 million options related to Nvidia was traded on Friday, 1.9 times higher than the 90-day average trading volume. A particularly high trading volume was seen for the $85 strike put option expiring April 17, with a total number of 234,626 option contracts traded as of Friday.

Source: Market Chameleon

Option fear gauge, which measures the cost of hedging downside risk elevated to 7.7%, comparing with a normal level at 5.5%. Option fear gauge is how much a synthetic put would cost to protect downside risk for 30 days. For example, 2% cost for a $100 stock would cost $2 to insure/hedge downside risk.

Source: Market Chameleon

Unusual Options Activity

Source: Market Chameleon

Apple fell 7.3% on Friday. It declined 9.3% on Thursday and lost $313.5 billion in market cap, the iPhone maker’s worst one-day market cap decline ever. The drop Thursday also marked the largest percent decrease since March 16, 2020, when the stock dropped nearly 13%.

Apple stock has been taking a hit because of itsdependence on Chinese manufacturing. Tariffs on goods made in China were set at a combined 54%, although the Trump administration gaveconflicting messagesabout the exact figure.

A total number of 1.99 million options related to Apple was traded on Friday, 2.2 times higher than the 90-day average trading volume. Option fear gauge, which measures the cost of hedging downside risk elevated to 6%, comparing with a normal level at 2.5%.

Source: Market Chameleon

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: BSX; NKE; F; AAPL; PLTR; NUE; SCHW; LUV; NVDA; T

Top 10 bearish stocks: TSLA; BAC; LRCX; INTC; AMD; SMCI; META; PFE; GM; HST

Source: Market Chameleon

Based on option delta volume, traders sold a net equivalent of -1,106,388 shares of Tesla stock. The largest bearish delta came from buying puts.