Monday, 10 August 2026 — EOD read. A tape that finished almost exactly where it started, and a session that was nothing like flat underneath. SPY closed at $773.03, twenty-three cents below Friday. NVDA closed at $217.55, down 2.86%, four cents off its low of the day. Both of those are true statements about the same six-and-a-half hours.
- The index barely moved — SPY -0.03% — while NVDA gave back 2.86% and closed on its low.
- Market-wide volume leaned to calls at a 0.74 put/call, but QQQ put premium outspent call premium by $228M.
- NVDA’s $216.77 low is the level to watch into Tuesday, with earnings dated 26 August.
What happened
SPY traded a $3.43 range — $771.62 to $775.05 — and closed at $773.03, down 0.03% from Friday’s $773.26. QQQ was the weaker of the two, closing at $720.87, down 0.30% from $723.03, and it finished 54 cents off its $720.33 low rather than mid-range. VIX closed at 15.46, up from 14.90, a 3.8% move in a still-compressed index; SPY’s own IV rank sits at 12.5 against QQQ’s 38.7. The single-name damage was concentrated: NVDA opened at $223.40, printed $224.14 in the first hour, then worked down to $216.77 and closed at $217.55. That is a 2.86% loss on a day the S&P proxy lost three cents on the dollar of a percent.
Market-wide the tape carried 36.01M calls against 26.75M puts — a 0.74 put/call — with $25.28B of call premium against $15.00B of put premium. The two index proxies did not agree, and we flagged the split in flow: SPY ran a 1.10 put/call by volume (6.07M puts, 5.51M calls) while QQQ ran 0.97 (3.05M puts, 3.14M calls). The dollars inverted that. QQQ put premium came in at $911.2M against $683.4M of call premium — puts outspending calls by $227.8M on fewer contracts, which is what it looks like when size concentrates in longer-dated downside rather than front-week lottery tickets. SPY was the mirror image: $883.3M of call premium against $719.1M of puts, yet net premium still finished at -$41.96M. In NVDA the same inversion showed up more starkly — $724.6M of call premium against $302.4M of puts, but net premium at -$49.1M, because bid-side call volume (1.07M) exceeded ask-side (951K). Calls traded heavily and were, on balance, sold.
Yesterday’s radar — OI confirm
Yesterday’s flagged prints, checked against this morning’s open-interest update — the tape’s own answer to whether the flow was real positioning. Thresholds: ≥40% of flagged volume became new OI = confirmed; 10–40% = partial; under 10% = not confirmed.
| Contract | Flagged | OI change overnight | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| MU Jan 2027 $1,300 calls | 4,586 contracts | -1,781 (OI fell) | Not confirmed |
| MU Sep 18 $900 calls | 1,454 contracts | -218 (OI fell) | Not confirmed |
| MU Oct 16 $880 calls | 310 contracts | +124 (40%) | Confirmed opening |
| SPXW Sep 30 $7,000 puts | 5,040 contracts | +1,447 (29%) | Partially confirmed |
| SNDK Sep 18 $1,330 calls | 234 contracts | +217 (93%) | Confirmed opening |
| SPCX Oct 16 $130 puts | 2,911 contracts | +44 (2%) | Not confirmed |
| SPCX Nov 20 $100 puts | 6,017 contracts | +1,796 (30%) | Partially confirmed |
| QQQ Oct 16 $625 puts | 13,108 contracts | +12,504 (95%) | Confirmed opening |
| QQQ Dec 31 $720 puts | 1,859 contracts | +436 (23%) | Partially confirmed |
| TSLA Aug 10 $330 puts | 28,469 contracts | +2,192 (8%) | Not confirmed |
| PLTR Jan 2027 $170 puts | 1,405 contracts | +979 (70%) | Confirmed opening |
The downside positioning was real and the upside chase was not: eight of the eleven lines added open interest, the QQQ October $625 puts converted 95% of flagged volume into new OI, and both Micron call lines lost open interest outright.
Why it matters
Our read: the block activity was the dominant tell on today’s tape, and it was not a single-name story. Three SPY blocks crossed off-exchange within the same second at 4:11pm ET — 1,000,000 shares at $772.9948, another 1,000,000 at $772.9848, and 750,000 more at the same price — roughly $2.13B in one clip, on top of a 300,000-share print a minute earlier and a 287,459-share cross at exactly $773.03 after the bell. Around that sat one of the heaviest broad-index off-exchange sessions we have logged this month: ITOT twice near $476M, VTI twice near $476M, VOO four separate blocks totalling roughly $1.48B, plus SPYM at $375.9M, IXUS and VXUS at roughly $575M each, VEA at $261.5M and three IVV prints at $776.74. That is allocation-shaped flow, not directional flow.
The single-name blocks told a narrower story, and it clustered in semis. NVDA crossed 1,000,000 shares at $217.55 — the exact closing price — at 4:00pm ET on a 2.86% down day. MU printed two 372,080-share blocks at $861.00, about $640.7M combined, against the $877.57 block that crossed Friday evening. AMAT crossed twice at $522.12 for roughly $470.5M. Meanwhile the desk-flow tape showed GLD September $415 calls taken repeatedly through four sweep prints, and SMH September $580 puts lifted for $1.79M. Our read: the same session that saw enormous passive-shaped index accumulation also saw semiconductor exposure being re-marked in size and hedged in options. Those two things are not contradictory — they are what a flat index close is made of.
What to watch into Tuesday
- $216.77 — NVDA’s low today, and the level to watch. A close beneath it would mark the first lower low since the run into Friday; $224.14, today’s high, is the reference on the other side. Earnings are dated 26 August.
- $720.33 — QQQ’s low. Price closed 54 cents above it. A session that trades through would put the index below Friday’s $716.51 low as the next structural reference.
- $771.62 and $775.05 — SPY’s range today. Both ends are unbroken; the index has now closed within a quarter-point of Friday, so the range itself is the observation.
- VIX at 15.46. Up 3.8% on the day but still low by the year’s distribution. A move back beneath 14.90 would return it to Friday’s level; the 20-day realized print sits near 14.4.
- SMH near $575.32 — where the September $580 puts printed. That strike is the marker the hedge was set against, and it sits just above spot.
- $861.00 in MU — where today’s twin blocks crossed, against $877.57 on Friday’s after-hours print. The gap between those two marks is the observation, not a target.
Names on our radar
Every row below is frozen at publication and scored mechanically in the Accountability Ledger at +5 and +21 sessions — misses stay on the page. Options prints are checked against the next morning’s open-interest update in the following session’s post.
| Ticker | What printed | Read |
|---|---|---|
| NVDA | Aug 21 $220 calls, two ask-side prints totalling $6.31M (32,387 and 25,262 contracts against 48,419 OI) | Size went up on a 2.86% down day. Ask-side, but net premium for the name finished at -$49.1M — the rest of the chain was sold into it. |
| NVDA | Aug 12 $217.50 calls, $1.28M ask-side, 19,885 contracts against 1,814 open interest (10.9x) | Two-day expiry struck within pennies of the close. Volume-over-OI at this ratio is unconfirmed as new positioning until tomorrow’s update. |
| GLD | Sep 18 $415 calls, roughly $5.38M across four sweep prints (13,750 / 5,890 / 4,666 / 3,539 contracts), spot near $402.60 | The most persistent upside buying on the tape, and it was in gold rather than equity. Repeated sweeps at an ascending fill. |
| SMH | Sep 18 $580 puts, $1.79M with $1.53M on the ask, 1,476 contracts against 1,924 OI | A semis hedge set just above spot on the same day NVDA and AMAT printed size off-exchange. |
| AMD | Aug 21 $475 calls, $2.20M entirely bid-side, 1,347 contracts against 386 OI | Every dollar on the bid. Read: this is supply into the strike, not demand for it — the opposite side of the NVDA call prints. |
| AAPL | Aug 14 $307.50 calls, $1.54M ask-side, 15,735 contracts against 1,320 OI (11.9x) | At-the-money Friday expiry with spot at $307.31. Short-dated and struck at the money — the least durable kind of print on this list. |
| TSLA | Aug 14 $327.50 calls, $1.04M ask-side sweeps, 9,169 contracts against 2,605 OI | Spot $329.71. Yesterday’s TSLA same-day puts converted only 8% of volume into OI — worth remembering when reading this one. |
| SPXW | Aug 11 $7,745 calls, $1.22M across 26 trades, 3,382 contracts against 121 open interest (28x) | One-day expiry struck eight points under an SPX of 7,753. The highest volume-over-OI ratio on today’s tape. |
| SPX | Dec 18 $6,300 puts ($6.30M, 1,500 contracts) and Nov 20 $7,100 puts ($7.71M, 1,000 contracts) printed in the same second | $14M of far-dated index downside placed as one structure roughly 8-19% beneath spot. Longest-dated hedging on the tape. |
| SPY | 2.75M shares in three off-exchange blocks at ~$772.98 inside one second at 4:11pm ET (~$2.13B), alongside VOO, VTI, ITOT, IXUS and VXUS blocks | Allocation-shaped, not directional. Our read: the broad-index complex was being moved wholesale while the single-name tape churned. |
The set-up
A 0.03% index close is the least informative number on this page. Underneath it: semis re-marked in size off-exchange, NVDA closing on its low sixteen sessions ahead of earnings, QQQ put premium quietly outspending call premium by $228M, and a broad-index block session heavy enough to look like reallocation rather than opinion. Yesterday’s confirmation run says the hedges from Friday were real — 95% of the QQQ October $625 put volume became open interest — while the Micron upside chase gave OI back. Our read: the durable positioning on this tape is defensive and longer-dated, and the aggressive prints are short-dated and struck at the money. The regime classifier still reads Bull at 75, unchanged in direction from Friday’s 73. Both of those things are on the page, and both get scored.
Method note
Flow and dark-pool data sourced from Unusual Whales. MPI score and regime classifier are our internal composite; daily synthesis is AI-assisted from those inputs.
Volume-over-OI activity is unconfirmed as new positioning until the next morning’s open-interest update; confirmations are published in the following session’s post. Index and single-name closes are end-of-day consolidated prints; daily moves are computed close-to-close. Put/call ratios are volume-based and computed per instrument, not aggregated across instruments. Off-exchange block figures are TRF prints and include extended-hours executions where noted. The MPI reading in the strip above is stamped to its own underlying date, which trails the price data by one session.
This is research, not advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security.
AZTMM HLDGS LLC is not a registered broker-dealer, investment adviser, or FINRA member. All content is retrospective research published for general circulation — not personalized advice, not trade signals. Options involve substantial risk, including losses that may exceed the initial investment. Full disclaimer.
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