Market Overview

U.S. stocks sold off last Friday(Jan. 10), with the S&P 500 erasing its 2025 gains, after an upbeat jobs report stoked fresh inflation fears, reinforcing bets that the Federal Reserve will be cautious in cutting interest rates this year.

Wall Street's main indexes closed their second consecutive week in the red.

Regarding the options market, a total volume of 58,840,019 contracts was traded.

Top 10 Option Volumes

Top 10: Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, AMD, CBOE Volatility Index, Meta, MicroStrategy, Palantir, Amazon, Walgreens Boots Alliance

NVIDIA stock shed 3% to close at 135.91 last Friday, down 6% for the week.

The chipmaker's shares joined Friday's broad market sell-off triggered by December employment numbers that came in stronger than expected.

Nvidia stock also fell on concerns about the impact of new AI-related export curbs that could also impact rival Advanced Micro Devices.

There are 4.16 million NVIDIA option contracts traded on Friday. Call options account for 59% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $136 strike call option expiring Jan. 10, with 230,724 contracts trading.

Apple is losing market share in China due to declining iPhone shipments, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a report last Friday. The stock slid 2.4%.

“Apple has adopted a cautious stance when discussing 2025 iPhone production plans with key suppliers,” Kuo, an analyst at TF Securities, wrote in the post. He added that despite the expected launch of the new iPhone SE 4, shipments are expected to decline 6% year over year for the first half of 2025.

Kuo expects Apple’s market share to continue to slide, as two of the coming iPhones are so thin that they likely will only support eSIM, which the Chinese market currently does not promote.

There are 1.39 million Apple option contracts traded on Friday. Put options account for 49% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $235 strike put option expiring Jan 10, 2025, with 156,072 contracts trading.

Unusual Options Activity

There are 330,360 Rigetti Computing option contracts traded on Friday. Call options account for 47% of overall option trades. Particularly high volume was seen for the $10 strike call option expiring Jan 10, 2025, with 20,364 contracts trading.

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.

Based on option delta volume, traders bought a net equivalent of 847,636 shares of Palantir Technologies Inc. stock. The largest bullish delta came from buying calls. The largest delta volume came from the 10-Jan-25 Put, with traders getting long 216,508 deltas on the single option contract.

Top 10 bullish stocks: Walgreens Boots Alliance, Comcast, Palantir, Edison, Weibo, MicroStrategy, D-Wave Quantum, Quantum Computing, Carnival, Delta Air Lines

Top 10 bearish stocks: Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Mobileye Global, Energy Transfer, Faraday Future, Tesla, Alibaba, Paramount Global, BlackBerry

If you are interested in options and you want to:

• Share experiences and ideas on options trading.

• Read options-related market updates/insights.

• Learn more about options trading if you are a beginner in this field.

Please click to join Tiger Options Club