Daily Pulse · Friday, 4 September 2026 · EOD options flow & dark-pool research · AZTMM HLDGS LLC
SPY / QQQ / VIX as of 4 Sep 2026 close · MPI 68 and regime Bull · early as of 3 Sep 2026, the latest published bar; the pipeline finalizes each day’s bar overnight
4 September 2026 — EOD read. The index tape did almost nothing: SPY closed at 770.19, down 0.39% from 773.17, and QQQ closed at 718.96, up 0.18%. The loudest print of the session was not in the index at all. Two VIX November call lines, struck at 31 and at 34, took in 269,424 contracts for $23.1M against combined open interest of 1,266, and nearly every dollar of that went across at the offer while VIX itself closed at 14.00.
Fast read
- SPY 770.19, down 0.39%. QQQ 718.96, up 0.18%. A flat, split tape.
- 269,424 VIX November calls lifted at the offer for $23.1M, against open interest of 1,266.
- Five of seven flagged contracts confirmed. The IWM $285 puts lost open interest outright.
Thursday’s radar — OI confirm
| Contract | Prior vol | OI change | Ratio | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPXW Sep 30 7525 puts | 12,124 | 828 → 12,750 (+11,922) | 0.98 | Confirmed |
| QQQ Oct 2 $700 puts | 5,245 | 1,305 → 6,352 (+5,047) | 0.96 | Confirmed |
| SNDK Sep 11 $1390 calls | 1,620 | 11 → 1,535 (+1,524) | 0.94 | Confirmed |
| WDC Jun 2027 $420 puts | 487 | 133 → 543 (+410) | 0.84 | Confirmed |
| AMD Jan 2027 $460 puts | 2,623 | 1,441 → 3,632 (+2,191) | 0.84 | Confirmed |
| SPXW Oct 7 8000 calls | 5,518 | 17 → 1,519 (+1,502) | 0.27 | Partial |
| IWM Oct 16 $285 puts | 11,811 | 65,395 → 62,775 (−2,620) | — | Not confirmed |
Five clean confirmations, one partial and one outright failure. The SPXW September 7525 put line is the one to keep in view: 12,124 contracts of volume produced 11,922 contracts of new open interest, taking the line from 828 to 12,750 overnight. That is a position being built, not traded around, and it sits roughly 2.5% below spot. The QQQ October $700 puts behaved the same way, and both were struck below the market on a session the index closed higher. Against that, the IWM October $285 puts flagged yesterday came back with 2,620 fewer open contracts than they started with, which makes 11,811 lots of bid-side volume a liquidation rather than a new short. The SPXW October 8000 calls converted 1,502 of 5,518 lots and land in the partial band, consistent with a mix of opening and closing hands on the same strike.
What happened
The session opened at 772.01 in SPY, made its high at 772.87 inside the first hour and then spent the rest of the day working lower, setting the low at 769.00 and closing at 770.19. QQQ traded the mirror image, opening at 719.35, dipping to 716.56 and finishing at 718.96 for a 0.18% gain. NVDA closed at 230.36, up 0.84%, having touched 234.76 intraday. The index went nowhere and the mega-cap tape carried what little upside there was.
The options tape carried a genuine split. Market-wide volume ran 42,807,244 calls against 30,220,660 puts for a put/call of 0.71, with $20.40B of call premium against $12.90B of put premium. Yet inside the two index ETFs the ratio inverted: SPY traded 5,416,200 puts against 4,487,143 calls, a put/call of 1.21, and QQQ finished at 1.00. Single-name call buying carried the aggregate while the index vehicles were used for protection.
The tide bears that out. Net call-minus-put premium opened firm at +$31M, reached +$52M by 10:30 and then turned over, spending most of late morning and early afternoon oscillating around the zero line before recovering into the bell to close at +$39M. Net call premium alone closed at +$78M against +$467M in the prior session, roughly a sixth of Thursday’s reading. Net put premium closed at +$40M, having been negative through much of Thursday. The four-fold expansion this desk described yesterday did not repeat.
Volatility stayed pinned. VIX printed 14.00 with a 13.80 to 14.58 session range, and the close sits above the session low, so the strip carries a close rather than a range. The prior session’s vendor close row was unusable, so no session-over-session VIX change is claimed here.
Why it matters
The VIX call lines are the story, and they deserve to be stated precisely. The November 18 $31 calls took 126,266 contracts against open interest of 462, a volume-over-open-interest ratio of 273, with $11.74M of the $11.84M crossing on the ask. The November 18 $34 calls took 143,158 contracts against open interest of 804, a ratio of 178, with the full $11.26M on the ask. Both strikes sit well over twice today’s spot. Whoever paid for that is not hedging a small move.
What makes it interesting is the company it keeps. The named leveraged, inverse and volatility ETFs printed nothing at all above $100M in the dark pool for a third straight session, and the index ETF option tape was put-heavy while the broad market was call-heavy. Protection is being bought in specific, cheap, far-out-of-the-money places rather than through the usual vehicles. None of that is confirmed as new positioning until the morning open-interest update, and tomorrow’s post carries the answer.
The regime read is unchanged from yesterday. MPI stands at 68 with the published label Bull · early on the 3 September bar, its first full session in the Bull family since the August drawdown. A flat tape does not disturb that. A second session of vanishing call premium would.
What to watch into next week’s session
- US equity markets are closed Monday 7 September for Labor Day. The next session is Tuesday.
- SPY 769.00 is today’s low and the first level the tape has traded down to since the run began. A close below it would mark the end of that sequence.
- SPY 772.87 is today’s high, and it sits more than a dollar below Thursday’s 774.03. Two lower highs in a row is the shape to watch.
- QQQ 716.56 and 721.86 are the equivalent brackets.
- VIX 13.80 is today’s low, and 14.58 the high. The two November call lines describe a very different level.
- Net call premium above +$200M would end the two-session decay from Thursday’s +$467M.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| VIX | Nov 18 $31 calls, $11.84M with $11.74M on the ask, 126,266 lots against open interest of 462 | Volume at 273 times open interest, struck at more than twice spot. The largest single conviction print on the screen. |
| VIX | Nov 18 $34 calls, $11.26M at 100% ask-side, 143,158 lots against open interest of 804 | The same hand, one strike higher and further out. Together the two lines are $23.1M of far upside vol. |
| SPXW | Oct 30 8000 calls, $47.5M, 10,089 lots against open interest of 5,911 | The largest index call line of the day by premium. Paired in the same second with a 10,003-lot 8050 line, which is the fingerprint of a spread rather than a view. |
| CCJ | Oct 16 $110 calls, $1.99M floor trade at 100% ask-side, 6,161 lots against open interest of 5,589 | Uranium bought upstairs, at the offer, roughly 9% above spot. The only large-cap floor call on the board. |
| SNDK | Jun 2027 $1560 puts, $2.12M with $2.09M on the ask, 69 lots against open interest of 11 | Far-dated downside bought outright in a name that printed $549M of dark-pool notional and closed near 1,740. |
| MU | Oct 16 $1000 puts, $1.22M at 100% ask-side, 411 lots | At-the-money downside bought ahead of the 30 September earnings date, with spot at 1,012. |
| TSM | Oct 16 $430 calls, $1.87M with $1.86M on the bid, 3,075 lots against open interest of 3,924 | Near-the-money upside sold rather than bought, with spot at 427.15. |
| GOOG | Oct 16 $350 puts, $1.78M at 100% bid-side, 923 lots against open interest of 7,380 | Downside sold into an existing line. The opposite posture to the SNDK and MU rows. |
| IREN | Jun 2027 $75 calls, $1.25M at 100% ask-side, 1,695 lots against open interest of 1,312 | Long-dated upside bought at 70% above spot in a small-cap name. Small dollars, high conviction. |
| SKHY | Nov 20 $175 puts, $1.08M at 100% bid-side, 1,636 lots against open interest of 229 | At-the-money downside sold in size, volume at 7 times open interest. |
The set-up
A flat, split session with call premium collapsing to a sixth of the prior day’s reading is not, on its own, a change of direction. The confirm rate held at five of seven, the regime label is unmoved, and half the dark-pool board went through four index vehicles in the closing window. What is new is the shape of the protection. Someone paid $23.1M at the offer for VIX calls struck at 31 and 34 while spot sat at 14, and the far-dated single-name puts in SNDK and MU were bought rather than sold. Tuesday’s open-interest update tells us whether any of that was real.
The boards — data appendix
Boards are computed on the complete universe of dark-pool prints of $100M or more for the session: 55 prints across 36 distinct names, $18.09B in total notional, paginated by descending premium until a page returned fewer than fifty rows (58 raw rows, 2 canceled prints dropped, 1 exact vendor duplicate dropped).
| Board | Today’s read |
|---|---|
| Participation | $18.09B across 55 prints in 36 names. ETFs 20 prints / $9.60B (53.1% = 9.60/18.09); single names 35 prints / $8.49B (46.9%). No trailing baseline is available from this cloud desk, so no average comparison is offered and none is estimated. The raw split is the read. |
| Concentration | Technology led the single-name board at 30.3% ($2.58B of $8.49B), with Communication Services second at 19.6%. Top single name META at $1.375B, 16.2% of all single-name notional, in three prints all marked at 616.77. |
| Positioning gauge | Leveraged-long $0 · inverse $0 · volatility-linked $0 across the flagged-events screen and the ≥$100M board. A third consecutive session with nothing in the named hedge vehicles, on a day when $23.1M went into VIX index calls instead. $0 is information. |
| Threshold count | 55 prints at or above $100M. The index complex (IVV, VOO, SPY, QQQ) absorbed $8.99B, 49.7% (8.99/18.09) of the entire board. |
Cluster watch
Same name, same price, multiple prints. That is the fingerprint of one program working an order. Top three by aggregate notional, of ten clusters detected at ±0.1%:
| Ticker | Price | Prints | Aggregate | Window ET |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IVV | ~$774.03–774.04 | 6 | $4.91B | 4:07 PM – 4:24 PM |
| SPY | ~$769.90–770.33 | 3 | $1.74B | 3:09 PM – 5:01 PM |
| VOO | ~$708.11–708.13 | 3 | $1.57B | 4:08 PM – 4:24 PM |
Also clustered: META 3 prints, $1.38B at 616.77; SNDK 2 prints, $549M at 1,740.00; INTC 2 prints, $487M at 95.80; UNH 2 prints, $477M at 397.14; XOM 2 prints, $362M at 159.61; MSFT 2 prints, $290M at 499.70; NVDA 2 prints, $261M at 230.36. Nine of the ten clusters land between 4:00 and 4:30 PM ET. That timing is consistent with closing-auction and basket work rather than ten independent decisions.
Notable data points
- $18.09B in dark-pool prints of $100M or more, across 55 prints and 36 names, with 2 canceled prints and 1 exact duplicate removed.
- The index complex (IVV, VOO, SPY, QQQ) absorbed $8.99B, 49.7% of the board, and the single IVV cluster alone carried $4.91B.
- 269,424 VIX November calls traded across the $31 and $34 strikes for $23.1M, against combined open interest of 1,266.
- Market-wide put/call 0.71 (30,220,660 puts / 42,807,244 calls); $20.40B call premium against $12.90B put premium.
- SPY’s own options put/call ran 1.21 and QQQ’s 1.00, both inverted against the market-wide reading.
- Net call premium closed at +$78M against +$467M the prior session; net call-minus-put premium closed at +$39M.
- Leveraged-long, inverse and volatility ETFs printed $0 above the $100M threshold for a third consecutive session.
- Five of seven flagged contracts confirmed in open interest, one partial and one not confirmed.
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. Board baselines are trailing-session averages computed from our own archived pulls; derived indicators are computed by AZTMM from licensed market data.
Degradations disclosed for this edition. The options-flow screen returned the fifty most recent alerts of the session above $1M rather than every qualifying alert, so its effective floor was $1.00M and the sample is recency-weighted rather than ranked by premium. Bid and ask side percentages were absent on all SPX and SPXW repeated-hit rows, so no side skew is claimed for them. The vendor’s VIX close of 14.00 sits above the 13.80 session low and is therefore printed as a close, but the prior session’s close row was unusable, so no day-over-day VIX change is claimed. The MPI strip is dated 3 September because the pipeline finalises each day’s bar overnight, and the SPY spot carried in that record (773.17) is the prior close rather than today’s, so the strip labels are split accordingly.
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 and not trade signals. Options involve substantial risk, including losses that may exceed the initial investment. Full disclaimer.
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