The U.S. stock market has been stuck in a two-month rut amid rising bond yields and disappointing earnings from Alphabet and Tesla, leaving bulls searching for a catalyst. Apple stands out as the only stock among the ten largest in the S&P 500 trading near an all-time high, CNBC reports. After months of stagnation, Apple shares have climbed about 20% from their late-June low and recently traded less than two dollars below a fresh record set just over a week earlier. The company is scheduled to report earnings after the closing bell on Thursday. Options activity reflects traders positioning for continued strength. Big-money participants have been buying in-the-money calls, while speculative interest has focused on a potential move to new highs by Friday, according to trades observed before the market close on Friday and elevated open interest built up over the summer. Of the roughly $590 million in options premium that changed hands in Apple on Friday, about $442 million was linked to calls, per SpotGamma data. Traders purchased nearly 560,000 calls versus just 332,000 puts, according to ThinkOrSwim figures. Options prices currently imply an almost 4% move for Apple after earnings—an unusually large expected swing compared with the roughly 1% average historical move over the past year, based on Cboe LiveVol data. “I think the probability is fairly high that Apple could help stabilize the market this week,” Nigam Arora, founder and author of The Arora Report newsletter, told CNBC. “Investors are viewing Apple as a defensive stock because, unlike several of its peers, it isn’t spending hundreds of billions on AI capex.” The largest single trade Friday involved a new position of $2.6 million in 280-strike calls expiring in mid-August—a bullish, near stock-replacement trade given its high delta. Among options expiring this Friday, the $320 strike holds the largest open interest, with about 13,000 calls and 5,000 puts outstanding, according to BarChart data. That positioning suggests confidence that last week’s lows will hold even if the reaction to earnings is muted. By volume on Friday, the most actively traded contract was the 300-strike put (about 7,500 contracts for roughly $374,000 in premium). The second-most popular was the 340-strike call (5,000 contracts totaling about $2.3 million in premium), SpotGamma data show. That call closed at $4.25, meaning buyers would need Apple to rally roughly 3.4% this week to push beyond its all-time high of $335. MacDailyNews Note: As usual, we’ll have Apple’s earnings results for you as soon as they are released on Thursday, Thursday, July 30th right around 4:30pm EDT / 1:30pm PDT. We’ll follow that with live notes from Apple’s conference call with analysts starting at 5:00pm EDT / 2:00pm PDT. Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon. The post Options prices currently imply an almost 4% move for Apple after July 30 earnings report appeared first on MacDailyNews. Invite your friends and earn rewards
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