To The Moon

ASML and TSMC earnings have essentially set the tone for this earnings season: solid results, but the stock opens lower. A couple of days ago, I mentioned that shorts were stepping in. On Wednesday, the bearish flow intensified, with two large orders in particular catching my attention. $NVDA Buy $NVDA 20260424 182.5 PUT$  — 50k contracts, notional ~$3M. As shown in the chart, institutions were actively buying these 182.5 puts expiring next week in the final minutes of yesterday's session. The implication: unless nothing happens over the weekend, something will. Not necessarily Iran — could be something else. Given how ASML has traded lower post-earnings, the expectation of a pullback to key moving averages seems increasi

$VIX$ A large VIX call order hit Tuesday: the 28 strike $VIX 20260519 28.0 CALL$  — 119.6k contracts, $11.48M in premium. A bet of this size implies a sharp, gap-filling move lower in the broader market. In theory, regional conflicts are winding down. The only thing Trump might be missing this time around — compared to 2025 — is that he never got to shout "buy" before the market did it on its own. But triggering a selloff just so he can make a speech? That sounds ridiculous. I'd rather believe someone else has an unknown reason to hedge with volatility. Another less clear VIX call: the 24 strike $VIX 20260722 24.0 CALL$ . The print landed right in the bid-

The whole world now believes Trump won't keep fighting, so stocks keep rallying. There's a big difference between actually wanting war and pretending to fight while wanting a deal. As a result, some well-placed insider short positions that were heavily positioned for a crash this week are getting crushed — like the 31.3k contracts of the SMH 405 put for this week $SMH 20260417 405.0 PUT$ . Of course, something else could still happen this week. But looking at the lifecycle of these weekly options, this large order is likely headed to zero — unless Trump drops another "obliteration" tweet. Even then, I think the market would keep rallying. At today's open, a large bullish order hit: the software ETF IGV 90 call

That's not an easy question to answer. But I checked the two perfectly timed insider large orders — $MU 20260618 400.0 CALL$  and $TSM 20260618 370.0 CALL$  — and neither has been closed. That suggests the trend could continue into earnings season. What's different between Q2 and Q1? Aside from the war, Anthropic announced $30B+ annualized revenue. Unlike OpenAI's verbal bragging, this sharp growth gives the AI sector a real shot in the arm. It won't lift all tech stocks, but it does keep the narrative alive that AI investment can generate strong returns. Anthropic's rapid rise is bad news for the software sector $IGV$, which is trending as weakly as Chin

Looking at the large option flows, after four consecutive up days, the market seems to have thrown in the towel. Sentiment can be broken into a few camps: No More Crash Camp: Short VIX $VIX 20260722 28.0 CALL$ , short SQQQ $SQQQ 20260410 76.5 CALL$ . Sideways Camp: Year-end sell puts on Intel $INTC 20261218 33.0 PUT$  and $INTC 20260918 39.0 PUT$ . Big Range-Bound Until May 1st: Sell put $NVDA 20260501 150.0 PUT$  + sell call

$MU$ Micron shorts covered, followed by a $50 million bullish call order. I joked earlier that Trump wanted to buy MU cheap — shorting it hard with big put positions, and that once those puts closed, it might be time to bottom-fish. Turns out that wasn't entirely a joke. On Tuesday's open, two of the most prominent short-dated bearish positions were closed: $MU 20260424 420.0 PUT$ $MU 20260424 400.0 PUT$ $MU 20260424 380.0 PUT$  Then, looking at open interest, a new position emerged: 29,000 contracts of the June 18th 400 call $MU 2026

$NVDA$ I had expected range-bound trading this week. But looking at NVDA's put flow — mostly clustered around 160 — there's a good chance we retest the 60-week MA. Institutional call spread for this week: sell 172.5 call $NVDA 20260402 172.5 CALL$ , buy 180 call $NVDA 20260402 180.0 CALL$ . The sharp sell-off in AI chip names might shake some confidence in demand. But nothing has fundamentally changed. It's just that stocks aren't cheap enough for Trump yet. Once these names get beaten down enough, the Iran-Israel conflict will magically get resolved. Sounds absurd — but check back when MU hits 300. Medium-term call spread rolled down: 180–200 from 190

$META$ Meta plunged about 8% on Thursday, triggered by an announcement to increase its Texas AI data center investment to $10 billion — the project was previously only $1.5 billion. Isn't this exactly what capital expenditure looks like in earnings reports? And Meta is showing the market that not only will capex not shrink this year, it will keep growing. That explains why Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all sold off along with it. Meanwhile, Apple $AAPL$ held up — sure, iPhone sales expectations are down due to higher hardware costs, but Apple's annual capex is in the tens of billions, not hundreds. Oh, and let's not forget Tesla, the cash-burning heavyweight, so it got dragged down too. Then, as luck would have it, Trump also felt the market hadn't dropped enough. Geopolitics plus AI spend

At Thursday's open, Trump remarked that he expected stocks to fall harder. Shortly after, the market slid sharply and tested the previous low. What I took from that: the stocks he wants to buy haven't dropped enough. If I had to guess which one? Micron. No hard evidence — just a gut feeling. So maybe when MU hits 300, it's time to bottom-fish. Not because memory demand is broken — it's not. Just that the President isn't in the car yet. A lot of long positions opened Wednesday are now looking like left-hand entries. $NVDA$ The floor is 170. Wednesday saw a large sell put order on the April 10th 170 strike $NVDA 20260410 170.0 PUT$  — 27k contracts. Translation: no matter how volatile the next two weeks get, the expectation

Most of Friday's options flow was hedge-driven — nothing too notable. But two trades stood out: Sell 180 Call $XOM 20260618 180.0 CALL$  — 34.4k contracts, $12.03M notional. Buy 55 Put $XLE 20260618 55.0 PUT$  — 35k contracts, $5.04M notional. So someone was already short energy on Friday. Then Monday came, Trump rolled out TACO, and oil cratered. But here's the catch: XOM and XLE ripped higher and hit new highs anyway. Maybe that's why expiry was six months out — TACO fired the starting gun, but oil is supposed to slide over the first half. The consensus now: one more leg down. Still, early bullish flow is starting to surface. $MU$ Memory demand is struc