Sometimes if the market makers have a large position in the ATM options they will balance their deltas and risk by selling or buying stock relative to their inventory on expiration day. Looking at the OI in the strikes around the daily move Friday there isn't enough there to do it. Even at the highest OI of 21,000 OI a the 125 strike if half the inventory was tied to the gamma that would only have been a million shares. I'm guessing more tied to a fund rebalancing. A poster further down the thread mentioned ARK dumping AAPL for PLTR. A good chance that is the culprit.
I thought it's a common occurrence that volume tends to spike at the very last moment of the trading day be it portfolio rebalancing or option expiration, but what makes me wonder is the abnormal volume usually doesn't move price by a lot. Why is that?
After filtering time & sales for only trades greater than 9,999 this is what I got: 1600:01 16,655,878 1600:02 417,618 1600:02 27,860 1600:03 13771 1600:19 686,502 1600:19 12,454 1600:28 20,022 1600:41 116,567 1600:41 52,936 1600:42 120,424 1600:42 120,424 1600:42 25,428 1601:59 49,426 1602:52 204,623 1602:55 11,545 1602:58 111,832 1603:00 56,874 1603:01 29,253 1603:07 156,215 1603:10 15,904 1603:13 11,512 1603:14 29,874 1603:15 112,592 1603:15 219,230 1603:16 383,100 1603:16 161,839 1603:17 89,160 1603:22 27,421 * 1603:22 19,665 * 1603:43 222,741 1604:54 42,352 1605:14 44,000 1605:23 14,268 1605:26 11,000 1605:28 21,861 1605:31 44,000 1605:32 46,961 1605:33 35,866 1605:36 64,669 1605:41 30,600 1610:45 137,102 1612:31 86,333 1613:19 53,922 1614:21 119,742 1614:21 369,426 1620:54 3,680,751 * 1631:46 14,510 1641:40 10,595 1752:04 10,773 Note all traded at the bid/down ticks @ $121.26 except 3.68m was $121.28, and 27,421 and 19,665 were $121.27. There also was of course a shitload of $121.26's lot sizes 9,999 shares and lower as well as many other trades at many other prices. Be curious what a market profile of after hours looks like to setup Monday's action. As some others have mentioned, very likely Cathie Wood/Ark or some other fund was the single large seller behind it. HTH
Thanks for the great data. Didn't realize the heavy volume was after the close. Given that the trade occurred at 1600:01, it must have been a prearranged trade. If if was Cathie Wood/Ark her timing was poor. I did well on Friday trading APPL options several times. At around 15:30 I put in an order for 30 AAPL 125 March 5 calls at 1.38. With about 5 mins before the close it was trading around 2. I usually will close out the position if it looks like it is not even going to come close. But I left it in. I hit at 15:57 at 1:38. I could not believe it. Trade of the week. Unfortunately it closed at about 1.10 I like my position and am looking for a rally on Monday.
There was a massive market-on-close sell order that caused the floor to fall from under the market. 1.5 million QQQs, 8K NQs, 3.5 million SPYs and 110K ES contracts were dumped between 15:59 and 16:00 ET on Friday. If real rates keep rising the tech sector's current valuations will quickly become unsustainable and tech stocks will crash hard. It's not surprising that funds are getting out fast. AAPL will easily drop below $100 if the ten-year rate hits 1.7%
Ark doesn't have that big an ETF. The real question is whether the MOC sell continues or we gap up on the open after the big sell program. My wild guess is yes because people buy all dips. Until it stops working
ARK is small potato, these are large funds rotating out of tech, risk parity funds in the process of reducing leverage, CTAs etc Whether the sell-off in tech continues is entirely dependent on the outlook for inflation and long-term rates. If Powell comes out on Monday talking up some form of yield control the rise in rates might slow down temporarily. In any case buying the dip in tech at this stage is tantamount to catching a falling knife. What's happening to interest rates is a fundamental shift. Understand that if the ten-year tops 2% the NDX will be below 11,000 and AAPL will trade well below $90. BTDers like Cathie will be severely burned, mark my words.
I hear you. So is mine, and I suspect that this time around BTDers may well get crushed by an avalanche of selling. We'll see.. next week will be interesting.