Overall, options trading activity has surged in July, driving the month-to-date average daily notional amount traded to a record, according to Goldman. Roughly $534 billion of options have changed hands on average each day this month, with more than half of that happening in call options. That’s above last year’s average of around $367 billion. The strategists say investors have increasingly focused on trading short-dated options. Those with less than two weeks to expiry make up three-quarters of all trades.
And much of it’s been concentrated in just a handful of stocks, with more than 60% of the total traded in July attributable to just five names -- Amazon.com Inc., Tesla Inc., Apple Inc., Nvidia Corp., and Alphabet Inc. Near 90% of all trading this month has been concentrated to 50 stocks, Goldman said.
Meanwhile, strategists at Susquehanna International Group also point out that call volumes in tech names have been rising. Bullish options in Amazon.com have seen a “notable increase” while those in Apple hit a 2021 high earlier this week, wrote the firm’s Christopher Jacobson in a note Thursday.
The heightened activity is helping to drive implied volatility higher even as the stocks have rallied in recent weeks, Jacobson said. “Given the role that these heavily-weighted names have played in driving strength at the broader index level, we find the activity worth monitoring.”
發表於 2021-7-17 07:42:04
收藏
樓主