On the eve of the earnings report, Apple options experienced abnormal market conditions
On June 25, 2026, an Apple brand logo was revealed at a store in Lower Manhattan, New York. The U.S. stock market has been depressed for two consecutive months, and U.S. bond yields have hit new highs. Parent company Alphabet, The latest financial report fell short of expectations. Bulls urgently need a leader to carry the market. High hopes were placed on it. Among the top ten heavyweight stocks in the S&P 500 Index, only Apple's stock price is within striking distance of its all-time high. Apple shares have traded sideways for the past seven months and are up 20% since their lows in late June. They are now less than $2 below the all-time high set just over a week ago. Apple will disclose earnings after the U.S. stock market closes on Thursday. Based on the transactions before the close of last Friday and the overall open position data of options this summer, options traders are betting on Apple’s recent strong continuation: big financial institutions are buying in-the-money call options, and many speculators are betting that the stock price will hit a new record high before this Friday. Apple's U.S. stock price: regular closing price of $333.02; after-hours price of $334.15, an increase of $1.13, or 0.34%; after-hours price rose as high as $11.36, or 3.53%. Statistics from the market agency SpotGamma: The total premium volume of Apple options last Friday was US$590 million, of which call options accounted for US$442 million. Data from trading software ThinkOrSwim showed traders bought nearly 560,000 call options, while just 332,000 puts were traded. A more critical point calculated by Cboe LiveVol of the Chicago Board Options Exchange: The current option pricing implies that Apple’s stock price will fluctuate close to 4% after the release of Apple’s financial report; while the average fluctuation of Apple’s financial report in the past year was only 1%, this expected amplitude is unusually large. Nigam Arora, founder of Arora Investment Newsletter, said: "I think Apple has a high probability of stabilizing the market this week. Investors regard Apple as a defensive target because, unlike many of its peers, Apple has not spent hundreds of billions of funds on AI capital expenditures." Apple’s biggest single options trade on Friday: A trader spent $2.6 million to open a new long call option expiring in mid-August with a $280 strike price. The delta value of this contract is close to 1, which means it is deeply real-valued. The effect of holding a position is almost the same as directly holding a stock. It is a typical long operation in which options are used to replace stock holdings. According to statistics from the market website BarChart, among the options expiring this Friday, the $320 strike price has the largest number of open positions: 13,000 call options and 5,000 put options. This means that even if the earnings report fails to promote gains, investors are generally confident that last week's low will not be broken. SpotGamma data shows that the Friday-expiration contract with the highest volume last Friday was the $300 strike price put option, with 7,500 transactions and a total premium of only $374,000; the second highest volume was the $340 strike price call option, with 5,000 transactions and a total premium of $2.3 million. The $340 calls were quoted at $4.25 each as of Friday's close. To exercise profits, Apple would need to rise 3.4% this week and surpass its all-time high price of $335. Open a futures account on Sina's cooperative platform, safe, fast and guaranteed