8/20 Recap

Sending this out a little early but overall pretty slow day thus far you can see the candle with nothing of note really. This week is probably a slow one in general until friday with vixpiration tomorrow and nothing until Jackson Hole. I was wrong on the NVDA earnings date yesterday, that is next week. We may get a small sell down to that 8 ema before Jackson Hole as we often get those panic moves beforehand, but in general until Powell speaks friday it doesn’t seem like much is happening. We’re 1% off all time highs in the market, the VIX is below the 16 level, there really isn’t alot of fear in the actual market considering how bearish everyone is in terms of consensus thinking that we’re nearing a recession.

Recent Trades

Paypal - I highlighted it last week in the 8/15 recap here and today its up over 4% to 72.30 at new YTD highs. They really loaded up those leaps last week out in 2026 and the move higher came shortly after. Impressive move in a name that has been a value trap for so long. Those 67.50 leaps went from 18.40 to 21.30 now in a few sessions for a near 20% gain.

HA - Hawaiian Airlines, this one did not go as planned in terms of dates, but it worked 2 days later. Last week on 8/13 here I noted the weekly call buys on HA with everyone expecting the court ruling by friday, they moved the date and this morning HA is up to 17.75 now from 13.50 last monday. Even the option players sometimes get a bit greedy with things and had this player below just given themselves a little more time to September, they would have made alot of monday instead, greed got the best of them by trying to play weeklies and their money vanished.

Trends

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Today’s Unusual Options Activity

Here is today’s link to the database as always it expires tomorrow at the open, the rest of today’s trades will be added by this evening. So check the link below for the rest of the action from today.