The Options Market, Decoded.

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) reports after Tuesday's close, its first quarterly disclosure since the June 12 debut. Shares traded near $120.63 Tuesday morning, up 5.3% on 44.4 million shares, with the August 7 weekly expiration carrying 234.37% implied volatility and pricing a move of ±$21.30 through Friday. That is an implied range of roughly $99 to $142, or 17.7%, over three trading sessions.

There Is No Volatility Percentile Yet

Most earnings previews anchor implied volatility against its own 52-week range. SPCX has traded publicly for seven weeks, so the 52-week implied volatility high, low and percentile all return no value, and the same is true for historical volatility. The usual IV rank and IV percentile comparison is unavailable, which removes the standard test for whether 234% is expensive relative to this specific stock.

The comparison that remains is cross-sectional. Reuters reports options traders priced a 6.6% move into Microsoft ahead of its report last week, and that SPCX options imply a swing of roughly $225 billion in the company's value. Aggregate implied volatility across all SPCX expirations sits at 117.01% against a VWAP of $118.55.

Wall Street Is Split on What the Company Is Worth

Consensus leaves limited room for surprise on the headline figures. Reuters reports analysts expect revenue of nearly $7 billion and a quarterly loss before interest and taxes of $1.55 billion. The variables carrying more weight are Starlink subscriber growth, launch cadence, capital spending on AI infrastructure, and any commentary on the path toward self-funding.

The valuation debate behind those numbers is unusually wide. Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan opened Wall Street's first coverage of the company with an outperform rating and a $190 target, expecting Starlink to carry near-term cash generation and the AI business to become the largest contributor over time.

We see it as the only vertically integrated AI company with the required capital, data, LLMs, hardware, manufacturing and engineering talent.Timothy Horan, Oppenheimer, June 11 initiation note

Morningstar reached a different number, valuing SpaceX at $780 billion in a pre-IPO assessment published in early June, citing uncertainty around the AI business. That figure came in at less than half the valuation the company was targeting at the time, and sits well under today's $1.5 trillion market capitalization. Shares reached an intraday high of $225.64 within days of the debut and closed Monday at $114.53, down about 43% from a closing peak of $201.80. The stock is flagged hard to borrow, and Reuters reports short sellers held an estimated $18.4 billion of mark-to-market gains as of the July 31 close.

The overall volatility level is massive.Ophir Gottlieb, CEO of Capital Market Laboratories, to Reuters

The Event Premium Sits Almost Entirely in the Front Week

The expected move is the swing, up or down, that option prices imply for a given expiration, and it runs close to what an at-the-money straddle costs. August 7 prices ±$21.30 at 234.37% implied volatility. One week later that falls to 159.35%, then 137.00% by August 21 and 123.43% by August 28. The curve keeps grinding lower and reaches 70.86% at the December 2028 expiration.

Two events sit inside that front week. Earnings arrive Tuesday night, and the first post-IPO lock-up expires August 6, clearing approximately 911.5 million shares held by insiders, employees and early investors for potential sale. Front-week contracts carrying this much event premium typically lose a large share of their value within minutes of the release regardless of which way the stock moves, a repricing covered in our guide to IV crush after earnings. For how a forecast like 234% compares against what a stock actually delivers, see implied versus realized volatility.

One Strike Distorts the Whole Call Board

August 7 open interest reads as overwhelmingly bullish at first pass. Call open interest totals 827,424 contracts against 268,778 puts, a ratio above three to one. That figure is misleading. The large majority of those calls sit at a single $330 strike, roughly 2.7 times the current share price, while the busiest strike anywhere near the money is the 130 call at 13,220 contracts. Set the $330 block aside and the two sides of the board are far closer to even.

Put open interest is distributed the way pre-earnings protection usually is, with the heaviest concentrations at $115 with 17,001 contracts, $110 with 16,090 and $105 with 14,828. Open interest alone does not establish direction, since covered calls, spreads and institutional hedges all contribute to the totals. Our option chain guide covers how open interest and volume should be read together.

Today's Flow Is Balanced in Size and Split by Strike

Tuesday's volume is close to even. Approximately 316,818 calls and 290,124 puts had traded by late morning, a put-call volume ratio of 0.916. Relative to their own norms the two sides are not equal, though: put volume is running at 2.22 times its typical pace against 1.46 for calls.

Where that volume sits tells the clearer story. Delta measures how much an option moves when the stock moves, and by extension how far from the money it sits. On the put side, 57% of volume is trading at 0 to 20 delta, cheap strikes that function as tail-risk insurance, and only 11% sits at 41 to 60 delta. Calls are distributed further up the curve, with 43% at 0 to 20 delta and 27% at 41 to 60.

Trade location adds one more note. Put volume printed at the bid or below 29% of the time against 23% at the ask or above, a tilt consistent with put selling into the elevated premium. Calls were closer to symmetric at 25% and 26%.

The skew runs against the prevailing bearish narrative. With shares near $120.80, the August 7 136 call sits about 15 points above the money at 235.59% implied volatility while the 105 put sits about 16 points below it at 220.78%. The gap widens further out: the 140 call carries 238.18% despite being the more distant strike. Upside calls are the richer side of this board. Interactive Brokers chief strategist Steve Sosnick told Reuters that traders are willing to speculate on a return toward the $135 IPO price. Reuters also reports the opposite read from positioning data.

The weight of the evidence is the options market is sort of leaning short the stock.Brent Kochuba, founder of SpotGamma, to Reuters

Four Structures That Fit the Data

Four structures from our option strategies library, chosen for this board rather than offered as recommendations. Two constraints drove the picks. A binary event with a lock-up two days behind it argues for defined risk, which rules out naked shorts in the front week. And at 234% implied volatility the premium is the deciding input, so three of the four collect it. A long straddle would cost roughly what the expected move is worth, needing SPCX above $142 or below $99 just to break even.

Strikes reference the August 7 expiration and its ±$21.30 expected move. Prices are Tuesday morning midpoints and will move into the report. Every structure includes a short option, and a short option that finishes in the money can be assigned. Our guide to the option greeks covers how delta approximates the odds an option finishes in the money.

• Bull put spread · neutral to bullish. Chosen on flow: 57% of put volume is trading at 0 to 20 delta and printing at the bid, so the demand is for cheap tails and the 29 delta put is the richer sale. Sell the 110 put near $5.15, buy the 105 put near $3.38. Collects about $1.78 on a $5 wide spread, so $178 in against $322 at risk, breakeven near $108.22, and the board puts the 110 put about 63% to expire out of the money.
• Bear call spread · neutral to bearish. Chosen on skew: the 140 call carries 238.18% implied volatility against 220.78% on the 105 put, making calls the richer side to sell. Sell the 135 call near $5.45, buy the 140 call near $4.35. Collects about $1.10 on $5 wide, $110 in against $390 at risk, with the 135 call about 73% to expire out of the money. The thin credit is the tell that call premium stays elevated far above the money.
• Short iron condor · neutral. Chosen on the term structure: 234% front-week implied volatility against 159% one week out is the premium this trade is selling. It is the two spreads above held together. Sell the 110 put and 135 call, buy the 105 put and 140 call, collecting about $2.88 on $5 wings, $288 in against $212 at risk. The catch is probability, since the board puts SPCX inside the 110 to 135 window only about 37% of the time. Widening the shorts raises those odds and lowers the credit.
• Collar · neutral to bullish, for holders. Chosen on the same skew, which here lets the call more than pay for the put. Against 100 shares, buy the 105 put near $3.38 and sell the 140 call near $4.35 for a net credit of about $0.97. Floor at 105, cap at 140, net delta drops from 100 to roughly 49.

One structure worth noting sits outside this list because it needs a second expiration to price. The calendar spread sells the August 7 contract at 234.37% implied volatility and buys the same strike in August 14 at 159.35%, which is the most direct expression of the 75 point gap between the two. It also carries the risk that a large move leaves both legs far from the strike.

What Sets the Reaction

The release is one input among several. Guidance on Starlink subscriber growth, launch demand, capital spending on AI infrastructure, and any management commentary on the August 6 lock-up will each move the front-week board. Some holders have already found hedging impractical at these levels. Ascentis Asset Management chief investment officer Clint Sorenson told Reuters his firm dropped a planned synthetic hedge because the cost had risen beyond what clients would accept.

The remaining question is whether the realized move exceeds the ±$21.30 embedded in August 7 premiums. If it falls short, front-week options lose value quickly regardless of direction, and the traders selling into 234% implied volatility keep the difference. If it exceeds that range, the buyers will have paid a fair price for one of the least predictable events on the calendar.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) reports earnings Thursday, July 30, after the close. Open interest, the count of contracts currently held open across all expirations, stands near 2.7 million calls against 2.1 million puts, and the July 31 expiration prices a move of about ±$12.73, or 3.7%, through the report. Wednesday's volume tilts the same way, about four calls for every three puts, with put activity picking up through the afternoon.

Volatility Is Elevated, Not Stretched

Implied volatility is the market's forecast of future movement, backed out from what traders are paying for options. Apple's sits near 31.4%, in the 64th percentile of its 52-week range of roughly 19.5% to 38.1%. Elevated, short of extreme. Realized volatility, the movement the stock has actually delivered, sits in its 60th percentile, so options are pricing only a modest step up from what Apple has already been doing. How that premium is spread across expirations tells you more.

A Flat Curve Behind the Event

The expected move is the swing, up or down, that option prices imply for a given expiration, roughly what an at the money straddle costs. Wednesday's expiration goes off the board before Thursday night's report and there is no Thursday weekly, so Friday's July 31 expiration is the first one that catches the news. It prices ±$12.73, and the premium behind it drains fast: 59.58% implied volatility for Friday, 42.68% by Monday, 30.87% a month out. From there the curve barely moves through December 2028. A month out and beyond, the market treats Apple as the same stock before and after the print.

Where the Positioning Sits

Open interest tells the longer story. Call open interest clusters at and just above the current share price near $340. Put open interest spreads across strikes below the market. A call-heavy board is not by itself a bullish vote, since covered calls, spreads, and hedges all add to call open interest. Wednesday's flow matches. Delta measures how much an option moves when the stock moves, and by extension how far from the money it sits. Nearly 60% of put volume is trading at 0 to 20 delta, cheap strikes that trade as pre-earnings insurance. Call volume is far more distributed, with about a third at 21 to 40 delta and a quarter at 41 to 60. Trade location adds a timing note. Put volume printed heavily at the bid in the morning, consistent with put selling, and that tilt has evened out as the session progressed.

The setup into the report: implied volatility in the upper third of its year, a flat curve behind the event, calls in the majority on both the open interest and volume side, and a put market dominated by cheap protection. Whatever Apple reports, the front expirations will reprice within minutes. For a closer look at how that premium builds and drains around earnings, see our guide to implied versus realized volatility.

Four Structures That Fit the Data

These four come from our option strategies library, each tied to the data above. They are illustrations of how traders can express different views with the same data, not recommendations of one structure over another. Strikes reference Friday's July 31 event expiration and its ±$12.73 expected move, a priced range near $329 to $354. The front week is where the earnings premium concentrates and drains, and where options move fastest; the same structures work further out for a calmer ride. Deltas and prices are midpoints from Wednesday afternoon's board and will move into the report. Every structure here includes a short option, and a short option that finishes in the money can be assigned, meaning you are obligated to buy or deliver the shares. The premium you actually pay or collect is the deciding input, and delta is often used as a rough approximation of the odds an option finishes in the money.

• Bull call spread. The board's call tilt with defined risk. Buy the 345 call at about 37 delta, sell the 355 at about 16. Net position runs roughly 21 delta and the debit is the most you can lose. Near $2.60 at Wednesday's mids on a spread worth up to $10, so risking about $260 for a max payout around $740. About one in six odds at the max payout; any profit depends on the debit paid.
• Short put. The 330 put, bottom of the priced range, trades near $2.45 at about 26 delta. Selling it cash-secured collects the premium the insurance buyers are paying and obligates you to buy shares at 330 if assigned. Roughly 75% odds it expires out of the money at Wednesday's pricing. The tradeoff is a small win most of the time against a large loss if the stock falls hard. Our guide to selling calls and puts covers the risk side in detail.
• Short iron condor. The direct bet on the front-week premium. Sell the 330 put and 355 call at the range edges, buy the 320 put and 365 call as wings. Collects near $2.55 against $10 wide wings, about $255 taken in versus $745 at risk. Near delta neutral, defined both sides, profits if Apple lands inside the range while Friday's 59% implied volatility resets. Roughly 60% odds at Wednesday's pricing.
• Collar. For shareholders through the print. Against 100 shares, buy the 330 put and sell the 355 call; the call covers about half the put for a net debit near $1.25. Floor at 330, cap at 355, and net delta drops from 100 to roughly 60.

The apes are back on the tape. AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) is up about 20% as of Monday afternoon, near $2.33 from Friday's $1.94 close, a stock still down roughly 99% from its 2021 meme era highs even after the jump. The move itself is not the story. The options board is. SpotGamma data cited by CNBC's Squawk on the Street earlier in the session showed roughly five calls trading for every put. By our latest read the ratio has come in to about four to one, 232,352 calls against 55,170 puts on 287,522 contracts, as put activity picked up through the afternoon.

Six Times Normal

Total options activity is running about six times AMC's own average pace. For scale, put it next to AMD, a $510 semiconductor giant having a busy day of its own, with implied volatility in the 96th percentile of its year and options activity near double its average. AMD has traded about 366,000 contracts. AMC, a $2.33 stock, has done more than three quarters of that count, and where AMD's flow runs a routine two calls per put, AMC's runs four. That mismatch between options activity and company size is the meme signature.

Bullish From Both Sides of the Board

Options flow is simply the stream of trades hitting the market, and each completed trade, called a print, carries a clue about who initiated it. A print at the ask means someone accepted the seller's offer price, which generally marks the buyer as the aggressor. A print at the bid marks the seller. By that read, Monday's flow leans bullish from both directions: 51% of call volume traded at the ask against 33% at the bid, consistent with call buyers paying up, while nearly half of all put volume traded at the bid, consistent with put selling. Put activity has been catching up through the afternoon, but the selling tilt on that side has held.

Delta is the other clue. It measures how much an option moves when the stock moves, so a 70 delta call behaves mostly like the stock itself while a 10 delta call is closer to a lottery ticket. Monday's mix breaks from the 2021 caricature: only 16% of call volume sits in those far out of the money lottery strikes, while nearly a quarter sits at 61 to 80 delta. On a $2.33 name even high delta calls cost pocket change, and a meaningful share of Monday's buyers chose stock-like exposure over lottery tickets.

A Thin Board and an Inverted Skew

The board is thinner than most traders expect: six expirations, nearest August 21, no weeklies. Every position carries at least a month of time decay. Implied volatility, the market's price on future movement, sits near 132% at the money, which ranks in the 69th percentile of AMC's 52 week range, with realized volatility in the 91st. Rough math on that level prices about an 8% daily move, and the platform's expected move for the August 21 expiration is about ±$0.76, roughly a third of the stock price. Since IV varies by expiration and strike, run the number for the series you trade. The skew, the way implied volatility differs from strike to strike, is the detail to remember: on AMC, call IV rises as strikes go higher, well above the at the money level in the front series. The market charges most for exactly what Monday's buyers want, a big move up.

IMAX Woke Up, With an Asterisk

If this were a theater trade, IMAX would confirm it. It mostly does not. The stock is down about 1% near $38.90, and while its board is running about twice its normal pace at roughly eighteen calls per put, the volume is tiny at about 2,600 contracts, 89% of it concentrated at the money, most printing between the market or at the bid. That fits structured prints or covered call writing, not a retail chase. Monday is a meme name story, not a theater story.

Where the Opportunity May Sit

None of this is a recommendation, and everything here carries substantial risk, starting with AMC's history of severe drawdowns.

• High delta calls are the flow's own trade: most of the stock's movement for a small outlay, with risk limited to the premium, the price paid for the option. The cost is that 100%+ vol and a month to the nearest expiration bleed time value if the stock stalls.
• Call verticals, buying one call and selling a higher strike call against it, put the skew to work: the option sold is among the richest priced on the board, which lowers the cost of the trade at the price of a capped payoff.
• Cash-secured puts are the other side of the crowd, with nearly half of Monday's put volume trading at the bid. The premium is rich for a reason: selling puts means a seller can be assigned, required to buy the shares at the strike, into a collapsing position, and a strike can go to zero.
• On the vol decision, 69th percentile IV against 91st percentile realized gives neither buyers nor sellers an obvious edge. The straddle price at any expiration is the cleanest read on what a move costs here, and the choice comes down to structure and sizing.

Sources: CNBC, Squawk on the Street, "The Return of the Apes," July 20, 2026, citing SpotGamma data on AMC options flow. Options statistics, delta distributions, execution location, implied volatility by strike, and underlying quotes for AMC, IMAX, and AMD per the TradingBlock platform, Monday afternoon, July 20, 2026; all figures in this article reflect that snapshot unless noted and are point in time, not full session totals. Related coverage: SK Hynix Options Start Trading Tuesday. Here Is the Playbook.

Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Prior to buying or selling an option, a person must receive a copy of Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options, available from your broker or at theocc.com. This content is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation.

SK Hynix options began trading Tuesday, and the opening session looked very different from what many expected. Rather than a wave of speculative call buying, Cboe LiveVol data cited by CNBC showed the most active directional flow was call selling, with the seven largest option prints of the session all classified as bearish. The biggest appeared to be the sale of more than 2,200 July 17 $180 calls at roughly $9 each, representing about $2 million in premium collected.

The stock has been a ride. Priced at $149, the ADRs opened at $170, surged more than 20% Tuesday as options and leveraged ETFs went live, then reversed hard. SKHY traded near $163 Thursday afternoon after Seoul closed 11.5% lower in an Asian chip rout, roughly 15% off Tuesday's close in two sessions. The bulls have not gone quiet: Barclays initiated at Overweight this week.

Five Weeklies, Two Days In

Volume was solid rather than spectacular. CNBC counted about 150,000 contracts by midday Tuesday, more than the VanEck Semiconductor ETF but under a third of Micron's, and the full session finished north of 218,000 by other counts. One explanation for the muted call buying: a dozen leveraged single-stock ETFs launched the same day and absorbed much of the speculative flow. Desks expected weeklies to be the next catalyst. They arrived fast, five of them, July 24 through August 28, hitting the board Thursday morning.

The Vol Cliff

We pulled ATM implied volatility for every listed SKHY expiration from the TradingBlock platform Thursday, hours after the weeklies listed, with the stock near $165. The front contract, then one day from expiration, quoted 179%, a ±$14 expected move into Friday's close. From there the curve falls off a cliff: the new weeklies priced the coming weeks between 93% and 117%, September near 113%, December near 104%, fading toward 90% by the end of 2027.

A curve sloping down this steeply has a name: backwardation. Near-dated contracts price higher implied volatility than longer-dated ones, which means lower future implied volatility is already built into the further expirations. If implied volatility falls that way in practice, long premium positions face a second headwind on top of direction. IV crush is what traders call that, and it means a call can be right on direction and still lose if volatility drops enough. SpaceX offers a recent parallel. Implied volatility on its options fell from near 160% at launch toward 110%, and as vega worked against long positions, many buyers on both sides of the market saw premiums decline even when the stock moved their way. Outcomes still varied by strike, expiration, and timing.

Earnings Are Now on the Board

SK hynix confirmed its second-quarter results call for July 29 in Seoul, the evening of July 28 in US markets. That makes the July 31 weekly the first expiration to capture the print, making the new weeklies more relevant. In Thursday's snapshot the August 14 weekly quoted 93% implied volatility against 124% at the August 21 monthly. Kinks like that can reflect the thin liquidity typical of newly listed expirations. Treat weekly quotes, and weekly fills, with care until volume builds.

What Open Interest Says

One caveat first, because it trips up a lot of traders. Open interest is not live. The OCC publishes it once a day after processing the prior session, so the numbers on your screen this afternoon reflect positions through yesterday's close. Volume in the next column over is live. Two different clocks, side by side.

As of Wednesday's close, open interest was concentrated in downside puts and higher-strike calls. The July 145 puts held more than 37,000 contracts, by far the biggest line on the board, and the July 175 through 200 calls held several thousand apiece. That tracks with the debut session, where Bloomberg reported the $185 call was the single most active contract and the $145 puts were next. Open interest shows where contracts are open, not who is long or short them, so it says nothing about whether those lines are outright positions, spreads, covered stock, or dealer inventory. What it does mark is where the market has built. Whether those concentrations survived Thursday's slide will not be confirmed until the next OCC update, which is why volume against open interest is worth watching in a name this young. Read our option chain explained guide if those columns are new to you.

Hard to Borrow, and It Matters

As of Thursday's board, SKHY was flagged hard to borrow. Shares to short are scarce and expensive, which props up put prices and makes the arbitrage that would normally pin the ADR to its Seoul parent more difficult and expensive. Rich can stay rich, and the ADRs have traded at a wide premium to the Seoul shares since the debut.

The Skew: What Protection Costs

Implied volatility is not one number per expiration. It changes strike by strike, and that shape, the skew, shows where premium is richest. In the same Thursday snapshot the expiring July puts were extreme: near 156% at the money, 182% at the 150s, and 217% at the 135s, about 18% out of the money. Implied volatility increased as strikes moved lower. One month out the effect nearly vanished, with August puts clustered between 119% and 123%.

Read together, the curves show downside protection priced at a steep premium in the front expiration and close to flat a month out. That shape changes the math on nearly every structure. Outright puts are the priciest protection, because steep skew is a surcharge on exactly the strikes buyers want. Put spreads lean against it, since the put sold is relatively richer than the put bought. Collars finance a put by selling a call, though quoted call premiums here carry a hard-to-borrow distortion. And put sellers collect the higher premium associated with that skew, taking on the corresponding downside risk, which is why cash-secured put writers see such large credits well below the market. The surcharge reflects elevated demand for near-term downside insurance. None of this is a recommendation. It is how the curve prices risk, and knowing where skew sits is the difference between paying it and collecting it.

Bullish, Bearish, or Neutral: How Traders Are Framing It

None of what follows is a recommendation. It is a description of the structures traders use when implied volatility runs this hot: long, short, or the trade that dominated day one, selling the premium itself. Pick a stance and tap through. Premiums are illustrative, drawn from Thursday's August board.

Two threads run through all nine. Sellers are paid extraordinary rent, but the expected move is priced that wide for a reason, and the risk taken to collect it varies enormously by structure: a covered call caps upside on stock already owned, while a naked strangle carries undefined risk on both sides. Buyers face the mirror problem: every long option pays for a huge move, then fights the implied volatility normalization priced into the curve. The straddle price at any expiration is the cleanest read on what a move costs, and across this board it costs a lot everywhere.

Bottom Line

The first week delivered a seller's market at extreme volatility, an inverted volatility term structure pricing lower future implied volatility, and a borrow-constrained stock still carrying a premium to Seoul. Weeklies are live, earnings land July 29, and the vol curve will tell the story from here. We will keep tracking it. For launch-week context, start with our SKHY options playbook. Newer to this? Our free options trading course covers expected moves, spreads, and volatility from the ground up, and option strategies breaks down every structure above.

Sources: CNBC, day-one options flow and volume via Cboe LiveVol · Seeking Alpha, debut activity in the July 17 expiry · Seeking Alpha, implied volatility and leveraged ETF dynamics · Bloomberg, debut session most-active contracts · CNBC, Seoul shares fall 11.5% in Asia chip rout · Reuters, single-stock ETF filings. SK hynix, Q2 2026 earnings call scheduling (Form 6-K). Volatility term structure, expected moves, skew, and borrow status per the TradingBlock platform, midday Thursday, July 16, 2026; all option figures in this article reflect that snapshot unless noted. Open interest per the same platform, reflecting the OCC's most recent daily update as of the prior session's close.

Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Prior to buying or selling an option, a person must receive a copy of Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options, available from your broker or at theocc.com. This content is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation.