All In
The title is my attitude toward the Q4 market — more precisely, through Anthropic's IPO.
Q4 has three major tailwinds. First, Anthropic has tentatively finalized its IPO date. It's reportedly planning a large-scale IPO before the Thanksgiving holiday (around November 26), and could begin IPO marketing as early as the week of November 9. It plans to target a valuation between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion.
As everyone knows, a blockbuster company going public means the market atmosphere has to be heated up — the market must rise.
Second, historical data: since 1930, the S&P 500 has averaged a 5.6% gain in Q4 of midterm election years — twice the average gain of other years.
Third, tonight's nonfarm payrolls. Only 29,000 jobs added — it made me laugh. Rate-hike odds immediately dropped. The statistics bureau isn't even pretending anymore. Looks like everyone wants to make a big score by year-end.
Of course, what to go all in on matters. That's where the options block trade screener comes in — rather than screening yourself, just watch what the block trades are buying. Especially those with particularly large volume and notional value. For example, TSMC has had two large buy orders in the past two days:
$TSM 20261106 460.0 CALL$ — volume 10,000 contracts, notional over $20 million.
$TSM 20270617 480.0 CALL$ — volume 4,000 contracts, notional $21.4 million.
Combined, that's over $40 million — a massive bet, significantly boosting the buyer's win rate. Of course, after a block trade opens, you need to closely watch when it closes. But judging by the expiry dates, October bullishness is a given.
By the way, today's pre-market gapped up and kept climbing — chasing options at highs isn't advisable. Add on dips.
Of course, if you really don't want to pick individual stocks, you can just buy QQQ:
For example, a block trade opened the November 20-expiry 775 call $QQQ 20261120 775.0 CALL$ — volume 42,000 contracts, notional $40.698 million.
Even further, you could look at QQQ's holdings ranked by weight — for example, the #1 holding is NVDA…
If you're not used to buying calls, consider selling puts to raise the delta of your strike, choosing at-the-money or similar, or just hold the stock directly.
Overall, Q4 presents more opportunity than risk. Aggressive or conservative, small position or large — all are fine. But not holding anything will be costly.
Disclaimer: Investing carries risk. This is not financial advice. The above content should not be regarded as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation on acquiring or disposing of any financial products, any associated discussions, comments, or posts by author or other users should not be considered as such either. It is solely for general information purpose only, which does not consider your own investment objectives, financial situations or needs. TTM assumes no responsibility or warranty for the accuracy and completeness of the information, investors should do their own research and may seek professional advice before investing.
