27 August 2026 — EOD read. NVDA’s post-earnings pop set the tone for a broad, if unevenly hedged, advance.
- Indices closed higher, led by NVDA’s ~8.7% post-earnings jump; QQQ finished within a quarter-point of its high.
- Options flow concentrated in NVDA calls across two 2027 expiries; SPY, IWM, PANW puts kept the hedge book active.
- MRVL reports after tonight’s close — its pre-earnings call flow is the first thing worth checking against tomorrow’s print.
What happened
Equities closed higher across the board Thursday, with NVDA doing the heavy lifting. The stock closed at $227.98, up roughly 8.7% from Wednesday’s $209.66, after beating Wall Street’s EPS estimate ($2.22 actual vs. $2.091 expected) in Wednesday’s postmarket report. SPY closed at $771.10 (+0.66% from $766.08), and QQQ closed at $721.11 (+1.37% from $711.37) — QQQ finished within 24 cents of its session high of $721.35, a strong close for the tech-heavy index. VIX settled at 14.00, down a full point from Wednesday’s 15.00 close.
Market-wide options volume ran call-heavy — 40.5M calls against 27.4M puts, a 0.68 put/call ratio — but that skew was driven largely by single-name activity; NVDA alone traded over 5 million calls against 2.3 million puts today. The index-level tape told a more balanced story: SPY’s own put/call ratio came in at 1.03 and QQQ’s at 1.09, both modestly put-heavy even as the broader market skewed toward calls.
Why it matters
Our read: the NVDA options activity is the dominant tell on today’s tape. Call buying wasn’t confined to a single expiry — positioning stacked at the Jan 2027 $200 strike and the Mar 2027 $260 strike, both with volume well ahead of open interest. A spread across expiries like that reads as more than a same-day reaction to the earnings beat; it reads as an extension of bullish positioning well past this print.
At the same time, the index-level puts (SPY, IWM) and the PANW pre-earnings put print are a reminder that the hedging book didn’t go away just because NVDA had a strong day. Bullish single-name conviction sitting next to systematic index and earnings-specific hedging is consistent with a market that’s still buying protection even as it participates in the upside.
What to watch into Friday’s session
- $767 — Thursday’s SPY low, and the level to watch. A close below would mark the first break of this week’s range; $772 is the reference on the other side, today’s high.
- $714.50–$721.35 — QQQ’s full range today; a close outside either bound would be the first meaningful move away from Thursday’s tight band.
- MRVL reports after tonight’s close — that puts both call prints flagged below first in line for tomorrow’s open-interest check.
- NVDA’s Aug 28 $220 calls expire tomorrow — the shortest-dated print in today’s flow, worth watching purely for how it settles.
- The IWM $285 puts and the SPY/AVGO dark-pool blocks are both first up for tomorrow morning’s open-interest confirmation.
- VIX at 14.00 — the lowest close of the past two sessions; a move back above 15 would mark a reversal of this week’s calm.
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 | Two prints at the Jan 2027 $200 call, ~$27.9M combined premium; combined volume of roughly 370,000 contracts ran more than 4x the 84,844 open interest. | Size like that relative to standing OI marks this as fresh interest rather than an add to an existing position — confirmation comes with tomorrow’s OI update. |
| NVDA | A further ~$7.6M in call premium at the Mar 2027 $260 strike — a sweep plus a repeated-hit cluster, combined volume near 42% of the 24,737 open interest. | Positioning stacked at two different strikes and expiries in the same session reads as conviction extending well past the earnings pop itself. |
| MRVL | Two prints ahead of tonight’s earnings: a sweep at the Sept $300 call (volume 114% of OI) and repeated hits at the Oct $260 call (volume 50% of OI). | MRVL reports after tonight’s close — both are pre-earnings positioning, not a reaction to a number that hasn’t printed yet. |
| PANW | A $4.47M block at the Nov $380 put, flagged as an OTM-earnings-floor print, all-opening; volume ran nearly 6x the 194 open interest. | A full opening trade at that size and multiple, a week ahead of PANW’s Sept 1 earnings date, reads as a fresh hedge or bearish bet rather than a close-out. |
| IWM | Repeated interest at the $285 put strike across two expiries — Sept 18 ($1.04M premium, volume 38% of OI) and Oct 16 ($1.2M premium, volume 77% of OI). | The same strike showing up twice, in two different expiries, in one session is worth tracking into next session. |
| SPY | A 414,244-share, $319.4M print in the extended session, tagged prior-reference-price. | The session’s largest print by premium — prior-reference-price tags on extended-hours prints like this typically mark administrative crosses rather than fresh conviction, so we’re not reading directional intent into it. |
| AVGO | A 304,535-share, $113.1M extended-hours block, also tagged prior-reference-price. | Same caveat as the SPY print above — the tag points to a technical cross, not a standalone directional tell. |
| PCG | A sweep-into-floor call print at the Dec $21 strike; volume of 26,789 against open interest of just 324 — over 80x. | The volume-to-OI multiple is the standout here, well outside the range we’d call routine, even before OI confirms it tomorrow. |
The set-up
Take the pieces together and Thursday reads as a market digesting a large positive surprise from one of its most important names without abandoning its hedges. NVDA’s options tape shows conviction extended across multiple expiries rather than a single-day pop trade; the index puts and the PANW earnings hedge show the other side of that same book still active. Tomorrow’s MRVL print, plus the morning’s open-interest update on today’s largest prints, are the two checkpoints that will tell us which side of that tension is actually driving the tape.
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.
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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