The Applied Analyst @AppliedAnalyst

$WMB — someone built a $3.1M short position without shorting a single share. Monday 10:01 ET, a seller hit 3,022 January 2027 $75 calls for $1.72M, below the bid (whale selling the call). Forty seconds later, and again at 10:38, the same $75 strike started printing puts — 2,898 bought at the ask for $1.42M in three blocks, into a line that was close to empty. Sold call plus bought put, same strike, same expiry, matched size: that is a synthetic short, the payoff of being short roughly 290,000 shares. The calls paid for the puts with $295K left over, so the position was put on for a credit — effective short from about $75.77, with five months to run. The chart makes it simple. WMB has spent the summer rolling over from a top under $80, and everything now sits on one shelf: $69.50-$70. That shelf is the whole trade. It has caught every pullback so far — but break it and this stock goes much lower, and that is exactly the move the whale is being paid for. He is short from around $75.77 with January 2027 to be right. Bearish on a break of $69.50-$70. Research and education, not financial advice.

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$AXTI — Whale paid up nine times in a row for the same call: the February 2027 $145. First clip at $21.60 a contract in the morning. The last at $24.50, four hours later — every fill lifted at the offer, while the stock ran from $91 to $97 underneath him. $3.9M in total, on a strike that held eighty contracts before Monday. He never waited for a pullback. Stock bottomed at 37 and in an uptrend since; last quarter 19 cents EPS against a 7-cent estimate, margins 8% to 45%. The 145 strike is 49% away — long-dated bet. Research and education, not financial advice.

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$QCOM — the 165 line keeps getting bought. Thursday: 6,982 contracts of the September $165 calls swept for ~$3.6M — bought in 1,000-lot clips through the offer, all morning, into a nearly empty strike. Same strike we flagged Aug 3 (October expiry, stock at $148.74). That buyer is up +37%. Technicals: QCOM bottomed at 142.60 and momentum has shifted to the upside since. The stock is completing an ABC correction — a break of 165–170 confirms the bullish turn and opens a test of 180–190 in extension. GEX agrees: gamma flip sits at 167.50 with a +15M call wall at 170 into Friday's close, and positive structure stacked at 177.5–180 all the way out to October. Lose 160 and the map flips negative — dealers have to sell stock into weakness, with max −GEX down at 150. Long setup above 160. Flow cards + chart below 👇 Research & education, not financial advice.

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$CDE One block at 1:53 today — 4,000 September 2027 $20 puts SOLD at the bid for $2.14M. The strike held 374 contracts. This print was nearly 11x that. Read it carefully, because selling an in-the-money put is not a hedge. It's a commitment. They are now on the hook to buy $8M of stock at $20 — 6% ABOVE where it trades — for the next 13 months. Breakeven is $14.65, a full 22% below the market. You don't make that promise on a silver miner unless you expect to keep the premium. Settled open interest prints overnight. If the strike doesn't grow, this was noise and we'll say so — receipts either way.

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$HTZ today, in order: 9:57 AM — 11,430 Sep $2.50 calls SOLD at the bid (stock at 2.51). Strike held 2,066 contracts — 5.5x the open interest, fresh short 10:00 AM — 8,662 more Aug $2.50 calls sold at the bid. $683K collected on the two, right before the run 1:43 PM — 10,000 Aug $3.50 calls bought at the ask. Strike held 1,152. That's 868% of open interest 1:59 PM — 2,670 Dec 2028 $15 calls. Strike is 438% away. Sure. 3:07 PM — 10,000 Sep $5 calls bought ABOVE the ask Stock ran 2.41 → 2.84 into the close, +18% off the low. Someone is expecting a rally toward $4 over the next few sessions.

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$NKE One ticket at 9:47 — 4,691 January 2027 calls bought at the ask in a single sweep for $1,922,986, into a strike that held 3,943 contracts and saw nothing sold against it all day, not one contract on the bid. Stock was 41.30, the strike 42.50, barely 3% above it and running all the way to January 2027 at a delta of 0.54. NKE has been dead since it broke 51 and needs to close back above that level to reverse the selling pressure; this whale is positioned for a bounce toward 50 in the coming weeks, with earnings landing late September, though an ABC correction from here is not off the table. Settled open interest tells us Wednesday morning whether it actually opened. Research and education, not financial advice.

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$PLTR Someone bought 25,144 December 140 puts on Tuesday morning. The strike held 4,822 contracts before they started — five times what was already there. $13.34M net. And more than half the buying, $10.34M, went above the ask rather than at it. An algo worked roughly 2,000-lot clips for seven minutes, then one 7,000-lot block crossed above the offer at 9:54 for $5,425,000. He paid extra to get in fast. PLTR has been hot since earnings on August 3, running from the 120s to 178 in about a week. Strong resistance sits around 186. It may be due for a pullback, and someone is betting it retraces from here. Settled open interest tells us Wednesday morning whether it actually opened. We will post the answer either way. Research and education, not financial advice.

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Worth adding the options side. Five CRWV positions have crossed our tape since mid-July — 34.6 million in premium — and settled open interest confirmed every one of them opened: Jul 13 — 87.5 puts, Jan 2028, sold, 5.19M Jul 29 — 45 calls, Sep, bought, 8.91M Aug 3 — 115 calls, Sep, sold, 9.52M Aug 6 — 90 puts, Jan 2028, sold, 5.22M Aug 10 — 110 puts, Dec 2027, sold, 5.80M — the day before the print Four lean long. The August 3 call sale reads bearish on its face, but it may not be a bet against the stock at all — a holder happy to let shares go at 115 writes exactly that and keeps the premium. The tape cannot tell a covered call from a naked one. Research, not advice.

Verdict on the December 2027 110 puts: confirmed. Settled open interest went 337 to 1,535 — the seller opened it and it is still there. Then earnings landed. The stock is trading near 102 after hours against 88 at Monday's close. They sold those puts at the bid, into a strike that was nearly empty, the day before the print — and took in 5.8 million to do it. The whale got paid. Research & education, not financial advice.

$CRWV — $5.80M collected selling the December 2027 $110 puts. 1,272 contracts, one block at the bid, into a strike that held 337. The timing is the point: CoreWeave reports tomorrow. Selling a put the day before earnings collects inflated premium — implied volatility on that block was 87% — for a commitment that runs sixteen months past the event. And it is a commitment. The strike sits 25% above Monday's $88.19 close, taken on a day the stock fell 2.7%, and roughly $25 of that premium was pure time value. Not financing dressed up as a trade. The chart agrees. CoreWeave has been bullish since it bottomed near $60, and the A leg looks finished. A dip from here would not surprise us. The level that matters is 94-95 — clear it, and the path opens toward 115-120. Someone is being paid to own this stock at $110 into December 2027, and they took that bet the day before the print. Unconfirmed — settled open interest decides tomorrow. Research & education, not financial advice.

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$SKHY — 8.2 million of premium bought in one September expiry on Monday, and it went both ways. 5.65 million into calls: 1,041 of the September 145s just after 10am, then 1,320, 882 and 1,482 of the 150s across the late morning, every one of them at the offer. The 150 strike held an open interest of two. There was nothing there before. 2.55 million into puts in that same expiry: 1,108 of the 135s for 1.7 million at 11:41 — ten minutes before the largest call buy of the day — then five smaller strikes stepping down to 115. Now look at where those two strikes sit. The 135 puts are on the shelf the stock has been holding since late July. The 150 calls sit just under the 156 zone that has capped every bounce since. Somebody paid 8.2 million to own both edges of that range into late September, and the stock closed the session at 135. Both sides are unconfirmed — settled open interest decides tomorrow. Research & education, not financial advice.

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$DELL — four put buys in four sessions for $28.3M, and every one went into a strike that was nearly empty. $7.4M into the November 700 puts, which had 10 contracts open, and $7.4M into the January 2028 510 puts, which had 39, both on Aug 5; $5.8M into the November 540 puts on Aug 7, into six contracts; $7.6M into the October 550 puts on Monday, into eleven. All four bought at the offer, across four separate expiries from October out to January 2028, and the strikes climb — 510, 540, 550 — while the stock rallied. The three that have settled all opened and stayed: 10 to 259, 39 to 437, 6 to 421. Against all of that, one confirmed call buy at 7.7 million. Technicals: Dell is in a big range between 360 and 475. Trade it as such until one of those levels breaks. The whales have been bearish for days and are positioned for a move down — and Monday's print landed at 470.81, with the stock tagging 474.99 before closing at 457.88. That is the top of the range, and it is where every advance since June has failed. Monday's print is unconfirmed — settled open interest decides Tuesday. Research & education, not financial advice.

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$TTD — two sessions after the 23.5% earnings drop, the size still hasn't left. Off-exchange volume ran about $50M Friday and $44M Monday, against a 30-day average near 7 million. Roughly seven times normal, two days running. Monday's went through in two identical 1.16M-share blocks eight seconds apart, both at $13.39. In the options, someone reached out to December 2028: 1,399 of the $12.50 calls bought, none sold. Same strike, same expiry, 1,000 puts sold into a strike that held 110. The calls printed with the stock at $13.14 that morning. The blocks crossed at $13.39. Unconfirmed — settled open interest decides tomorrow whether that put leg opened. Research & education, not financial advice.

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We said Monday's settled open interest would decide it. It did — and it didn't confirm. $INSM: Friday's 5,500-contract Nov-20 $130 block didn't stick. Open interest came back lower than it started, not higher — closed out, not opened. Calling it dead. Research & education, not financial advice.

Friday 9:40 AM, one print: $8.8M into $INSM Nov 20 '26 $130 calls — 5,500 contracts block-bought at the ask at $16.00, right at the money with the stock at $131. 54% IV, 105 days out. Insmed is a commercial-stage lung-disease biotech: BRINSUPRI, its first-in-class DPP1 inhibitor for bronchiectasis approved last August, is guided toward $1B+ in 2026 sales, on top of ARIKAYCE in MAC lung disease. The pipeline swing factor is TPIP, its inhaled prostanoid for pulmonary hypertension. Why November? That expiry sits right behind two dated events: TPIP's Phase 3 readout expected this quarter, and Oct 28 earnings — the first clean look at whether the BRINSUPRI ramp is really tracking $1B. A $16 at-the-money premium says someone expects those answers to move the stock. Still unconfirmed: Monday's settled OI decides whether this block opened and stayed. Research & education, not financial advice.

Friday at the open: $ORCL Aug 28 $150 calls swept at the ask — 3,206 contracts at $6.78 avg, $1.6M net, 2.8% OTM with the stock at $145.97, paid through 61% IV. The detail that matters: Aug 28 expiry lands BEFORE Oracle's early-September earnings. This isn't an earnings lottery ticket — it's a bet the stock moves in the next three weeks on its own. The chart agrees (attached): ORCL bottomed around $115 and is working through an A-B-C corrective recovery. $150 is the trigger — a clean break there opens the extension toward $160–170, which is exactly the window this whale's strike and expiry are positioned for. Still unconfirmed: today's settled OI decides whether the position opened and stayed. Research & education, not financial advice.

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$TTD's Friday told the whole story in one candle: a hard flush to $12.80, a sharp rally back to $14.80, then a fade into the $13.80 close — all on ~134M shares, roughly a third of the float in a single session. That's capitulation volume — the kind that usually marks exhaustion, not the middle of a move. $12.80 is the line in the sand. As long as it's preserved, my read is a strong bounce over the next few weeks, toward the $17–18 zone. Lose that level and the setup is void. On the Evercore downgrade (Outperform → In Line, target cut $27 → $13 after earnings): sell-side ratings follow price, they don't predict it. Watch the price — it's the only thing that matters. Research & education, not financial advice.

Friday's last 30 minutes: $MU Jan '27 $1,300 calls block-bought at the ask — 2,565 contracts at $71.13 avg, $18.2M gross, $13.1M net after the sell side. With the stock at $877, that's a 48% OTM strike, five months out, paid through 77% IV. Nobody parks eight figures that far out of the money for a quick trade — this is a bet on a $1,300 Micron by January. Still unconfirmed: Monday's settled OI decides whether it opened and stayed. Research & education, not financial advice.

Friday's tape: 4,198 $SPCX Aug 28 $123 calls swept at the ask — $9.05 avg, $3.80M — against just 309 OI, with the stock at $120.99. 13x existing interest, 2% OTM, 3 weeks out, and they paid up through 86% IV. By the close that call was marked $16.60 mid — the position is already up ~$3.2M (+83%) on the mark, in one session. Still unconfirmed: Monday's settled OI decides whether this whale actually opened and stayed. Research & education, not financial advice.

$CRWV — six days ago a whale paid $8.9M for September $45 calls. The strike held 69 contracts. Sixty-nine. Settled open interest confirmed it the next morning: 69 → 4,731. Real position, and it stayed on. We sent this card to subscribers at 7:52 AM ET on Thursday, July 30, with one line: it still trades at the whale's fill, so you can follow at his price rather than above it. CRWV is $93 today, up 8.4%. Those calls are now worth about 149% more than the whale paid for them. As of the last settled count he was still holding 4,667 of a 4,731 peak. Whether he's selling into today's move, we find out tomorrow. Research & education, not financial advice.