Apple Put Options Volume Rise as Trump Threatens New Tariffs
$Apple(AAPL)$
Shares of the iPhone maker fell 2.7% to $195. That deepened the share price decline to about 22% this year, the worst among the Magnificent Seven stocks that includes $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$, $Tesla (TSLA.US)$, $Meta Platforms (META.US)$, $Amazon (AMZN.US)$, $Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ and $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$.
The most-active Apple options are zero-days-to-expiration (0DTE) put options that give the holders the right to sell the stock at $195 by end of trading Friday, with more than 112,000 contracts changing hands as of 12:51 p.m. That's more than 10-fold the open interest. The share price decline turned the out-of-the-money puts into in-the-money contracts, increasing the appeal of the 0DTE options.
More than 530,000 put options changed hands across 21 expiration dates changed hands so far, compared with the 20-day average of 346,233, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Including call options, total volume reached 1.04 million contracts, setting Apple on course to be the third most active stock option behind $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ and $Tesla (TSLA.US)$.
“Apple's roughly 40% US iPhone installed-base market share, per IDC data, may be seriously at risk if it's forced to raise prices to counter US President Trump's 25% tariff threat,” Bloomberg Intelligence senior industry analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard wrote in a note Friday.
Still, they said “Apple could eat the higher costs of the imported phones,” a move that they estimate could cut the company’s gross margin by 3 to 3.5 percentage points in fiscal year 2026.
“Even if Apple agreed to assemble phones in the US, it would likely take several quarters to materialize,” they said.
Still, there’s no shortage of bulls in the Apple options market. At 10:40 a.m. in New York, just as shares were trading near their intra-day low of $193.46, a bullish transaction was posted, with an active buyer paying a $3.61 million premium for call options that give the holder the right to buy 300,00 Apple shares at $200 each by Aug. 15.
That strike price, which is higher than the current stock price of $196, could signal optimism for a rebound in Apple shares.
Analysts at JPMorgan analysts including Samik Chatterjee said the 25% tariffs could translate to an increase of $50 or about 5% on iPhone prices, which they said are“within the realm of typical price increases the company has taken in the past – including recent news reports suggesting price increases for the iPhone 17.”
"The discussed tariff drives limited changes to our view on how Apple is well positioned and likely looking to navigate the hurdles,"the JPMorgan analysts said. The“ 25% tariffs could be passed on successfully.”
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