AMD Options Tape Turns Bearish: $58M Net Premium Skew Into Earnings
A $0.24M put at the 632.5 strike and a $0.22M March 900 call frame a split tape
Photo by Yogesh Phuyal on Unsplash
AMD's net options premium sits at negative $58.0M. The largest prints are balanced between puts and calls, so direction is less clear than the total implies.
The largest print is a put at 632.5
The biggest whale-sized trade on AMD was a $632.5 put expiring 10/9 for $0.24M. Next was a $0.22M call at the $900 strike expiring 2027-03-19. A $0.17M put at the $615 strike, also expiring 10/9, rounds out the top three.
AMD closed Friday at $608.10, down 2.03% after opening near $626.89. Both of those 10/9 puts finished in the money. A put that deep in the money on expiry day usually works as a stock substitute or a roll, not a fresh bearish bet, because there is almost no time premium left to buy. We don't know from this tape whether those were opened, closed or rolled.
The $58.0M number is bigger than the prints
Net premium impact is the dollar premium paid on contracts that lean bullish, minus the premium on contracts that lean bearish, based on which side of the quote each trade hit. Today's reading is negative $58.0M.
The eight whale-sized prints we can see add up to roughly $0.85M. Calls account for about $0.44M of that and puts about $0.41M, close to a coin flip. The bearish skew in the headline figure comes from the rest of the tape: smaller clips, spread legs and size that doesn't clear the whale threshold. At a $1T market cap, a $58M net figure is a lean, not a statement.
Near-dated calls look like noise
Four of the six call prints sit at the $607.5 strike, split between 10/9 and 10/12 expiries, with premiums of $0.01M to $0.07M each. Two prints at $0.07M on the same 10/12 contract suggest one order worked in pieces. That reads as a trader adjusting delta, the share-equivalent exposure of the position, around spot. It does not read as a conviction call.
The $617.5 call for 10/12 at $0.06M is the same story. Spot is within a few dollars of these strikes, so gamma, the rate at which dealer hedges change as price moves, is high. Dealers hedging these contracts will buy and sell stock in small amounts as AMD moves around 607.5.
The 900 call is the one directional-looking trade
The $900 call expiring 3/19/2027 sits about 48% above Friday's close and spans the Nov 3 earnings report after the close. At $0.22M it is cheap protection against an upside tail, not a core position. Citi lifted its AMD target to $800 this month, so a 900 strike is a stretch even against bullish Street numbers.
Whoever bought it is paying for a convexity bet, meaning small cost, large payoff if the stock gaps. Paying that implied volatility 17 months out says little about near-term direction. Dealers selling it hold a small vega short and hedge it with little stock.
What to watch
AMD fell about 6% in three sessions after its record close, and it still trades well above the $600 level tied to OpenAI's final warrant tranche. That makes 600 a natural magnet for both put buyers and hedgers. A break under it would push the 607.5 call holders and any dealers short those strikes to rebalance against the move.
The [Whale Alerts dashboard](/whalealerts) will show whether premium on November expiries starts to build ahead of the Nov 3 report. Ask-side call buying in those contracts, with the net premium turning positive, would invalidate the bearish read. Hold 600 on a closing basis and the put skew loses its edge.