AMC Options Are Trading at Six Times Their Normal Pace

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.