11 August 2026 — EOD read. A firm open that leaked all session. Both index proxies closed red by roughly a third of a percent, and yet volatility ticked lower — a combination that says the selling was orderly rather than urgent.
- Indices opened firm, faded all day, and closed near the session lows.
- Market-wide calls still outpaced puts, but index-proxy flow tilted the other way.
- A $1.08B off-exchange print in INTC was the day’s largest single mark.
What happened
SPY opened at $774.53, tagged $774.61 in the first hour, then worked steadily lower to close at $770.56 — down $2.47, or 0.32%, from Monday’s $773.03. The session low of $769.20 came late, and the close sat within a dollar of it. QQQ ran the same shape, opening $723.29 and closing $718.45 against Monday’s $720.87, a 0.34% give-back, with a $715.50 low that it recovered off into the bell. NVDA was the day’s tell in miniature: opened $222.17, printed $216.20 at the low, and closed $217.50 — dead flat versus Monday’s $217.55 after a $6 round trip.
The flow numbers cut two ways. Market-wide, calls still led: 31.68M call contracts against 24.01M puts for a 0.76 put/call ratio, with $20.44B in call premium versus $12.35B in put premium. But the index proxies leaned the other direction individually — SPY put/call ran 1.07 (5.44M puts, 5.07M calls) and QQQ 1.02 (3.47M puts, 3.41M calls). SPY net premium finished at negative $48.1M, QQQ at negative $1.1M, NVDA at negative $52.1M. VIX closed 15.28 against 15.46, so the hedging that did happen was bought without paying up for it.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDA Aug 21 $220 calls | 35,361 | +14,413 (48,419 → 62,832) | Confirmed opening (41%) |
| NVDA Aug 12 $217.50 calls | 22,494 | +8,796 (1,814 → 10,610) | Partially confirmed (39%) |
| GLD Sep 18 $415 calls | 15,726 | +11,698 (14,445 → 26,143) | Confirmed opening (74%) |
| SMH Sep 18 $580 puts | 1,515 | +1,215 (1,924 → 3,139) | Confirmed opening (80%) |
| AMD Aug 21 $475 calls | 1,420 | +1,197 (386 → 1,583) | Confirmed opening (84%) |
| AAPL Aug 14 $307.50 calls | 17,514 | +9,903 (1,320 → 11,223) | Confirmed opening (57%) |
| TSLA Aug 14 $327.50 calls | 10,439 | +1,677 (2,605 → 4,282) | Partially confirmed (16%) |
| SPXW Aug 11 $7,745 calls | 3,471 | +579 (121 → 700) | Partially confirmed (17%) |
The slower-expiry structures stuck; the same-week chasing mostly did not.
Why it matters
A down day with a lower VIX and a still-positive market-wide call skew is not a distribution day in the classic sense. What we flagged in flow was narrower than that: index-level put volume outpacing calls in both SPY and QQQ while single-name premium kept chasing semis and storage. That is rotation being funded by index hedges, not a broad de-risking.
The off-exchange tape said the same thing louder. An 11.08 million-share INTC block crossed at $97.71 for $1.08B into the close — the single largest mark of the day and roughly a tenth of the name’s session volume. MU printed $539M at $868.52, CRM $494M at $197.47, SNDK $445M at $1,237.92, AMAT $379M at $525.61. Our read: the block activity, not the index drift, is the dominant tell on today’s tape — capital was being placed into specific semiconductor and storage names on a day the indices went nowhere good.
What to watch into Wednesday
- SPY $769.20 — today’s low. A close beneath it would mark the first lower low since the early-August advance; $774.61 is today’s high and the reference on the other side.
- QQQ $715.50 — the session low it recovered from. Holding above would keep today’s fade inside a single-day range; $723.35 was the high.
- NVDA $216.20 / $222.20 — today’s outer marks. A $6 round trip to an unchanged close leaves both ends untested as closing levels.
- VIX 15.28 — near the low end of its one-year range. A move through 17 would be the first sign the hedging bid is paying up rather than nibbling.
- CRWV reported after the bell; the Aug 21 $100 calls that traded 18,451 contracts today are the contract to watch for whether that volume becomes open interest.
- INTC $97.71 — the level the billion-dollar block crossed at. Where price sits relative to it tomorrow is the cleanest read on whether that was accumulation or an exit.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| INTC | 11,078,664 shares off-exchange at $97.71 — $1.08B, into the close | The day’s largest single mark by a wide margin, and about 7% of session volume in one print. Size like this is placed, not chased. |
| GLD | Aug 17 $410 calls — 7,216 contracts against 251 open interest (28.7x), sweeps, ascending fill | Short-dated and far above the $401 underlying. Volume this far over OI is unconfirmed as new positioning until tomorrow’s update. |
| MU | Aug 12 $865 puts — 3,966 against 233 open interest (17x), ask side; $539M dark-pool block at $868.52 | Puts bought at the offer on a name that simultaneously took half a billion off-exchange. The two sides of that tape disagree. |
| SNDK | Aug 14 and Aug 21 $1,250 calls — $3.5M combined; $445M block at $1,237.92 | Options and blocks pointing the same way on the day’s strongest storage name. |
| CRWV | Aug 21 $100 calls — 18,451 contracts, $2.35M at the ask, into a post-close report | Event positioning against an $88 underlying. Tomorrow’s OI is the answer on whether it was opening. |
| VSAT | Dec 18 $80 calls — $25.9M floor print, 12,619 contracts, bid side, multi-leg | The largest single options premium of the day, and it came from the floor rather than the screen. |
| AVGO | Dec 2027 $430 calls — repeated hits totalling roughly $7.5M | Sixteen-month duration on a $414 underlying. Patient structure, not a same-week view. |
| AAPL | Dec 2027 $310 calls — roughly $6.0M across repeated blocks; $208M block at $304.91 | Same long-dated shape as AVGO, in the largest name on the tape. |
| SPY | Dec 2027 $500 puts — 2,426 contracts, $1.99M, entirely at the ask | A deep-out-of-the-money tail hedge with sixteen months on it, bought on a quiet-volatility day. |
| KYMR | 1,913,957 shares off-exchange at $107.85 — $206M | Nearly 3.5x the name’s 30-day average daily volume in a single print. Outsized relative to anything else on this list. |
The set-up
Two tapes ran today and they did not agree. The listed tape drifted lower on rising index put volume with volatility falling — the signature of orderly, unhurried hedging. The off-exchange tape did something else entirely: over $3.5B in blocks concentrated in semiconductors, storage, and software, led by a billion-dollar INTC cross at the bell. Our read is that the index give-back was the less informative of the two. Yesterday’s confirmations support that framing — the longer-dated structures we flagged became real open interest at 41% to 84% conversion, while the same-week call chasing in TSLA and SPXW converted at 16-17%. Patience showed up in the numbers; urgency did not.
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 levels are closing prints for the stated session. The MPI reading above is stamped to its own underlying date, which trails today’s close.
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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