Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 16 July 2026

MPI 66 Regime Bull · early SPY $750.72 -0.54% QQQ $705.94 -1.64% VIX 16.73 SPY/QQQ/VIX as of 16 July 2026 close MPI as of 15 July 2026 close

Thursday, 16 July 2026 — EOD read. Tech dragged the tape lower ahead of Friday’s July monthly expiration, and the flow tape spent the day adding protection. Here’s what printed.

Fast read
  • Tech led the market lower: QQQ fell 1.6%, SPY 0.5%, and VIX climbed back near 17.
  • Put premium out-ran call premium market-wide, with index puts notably heavy on QQQ.
  • Friday is July monthly expiration — today’s lows, SPY $748 and QQQ $703, are the levels to watch.

What happened

SPY closed at $750.72, down 0.54% from Wednesday’s $754.81, after tagging a session low of $747.88. QQQ took the brunt of it, closing $705.94, down 1.64% from $717.74, with a low at $702.61. NVDA fell 2.4% to $207.40. VIX finished at 16.73, up from 15.67, with an intraday high of 17.23 — a two-session climb, though still a subdued absolute level.

Market-wide, 39.0M calls traded against 33.8M puts — a 0.87 put/call on volume — but the premium picture tilted the other way: $28.9B of put premium versus $27.8B of call premium. The indexes were where the defense concentrated. SPY ran a 1.14 put/call on volume; QQQ ran 1.25, with $1.67B of put premium against $0.99B in calls. QQQ’s 30-day IV rank jumped from 56 to 67 in a single session — the options market repriced tech risk today in a way it did not reprice broad-market risk.

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.

ContractFlaggedOI change overnightVerdict
SOXX Aug 7 $550 puts754 traded+751 (≈100%)Confirmed opening
NVDA July 20 $207.50 calls4,413 traded+1,578 (36%)Partially confirmed
VRT July 24 $300 calls957 traded+618 (65%)Confirmed opening
IBM July 24 $220 puts1,878 traded+1,316 (70%)Confirmed opening
CVX July 24 $180 calls1,696 traded+897 (53%)Confirmed opening
TRI Sept 18 $95 puts2,000 traded+2,000 (100%)Confirmed opening

Five of six flagged prints became new open interest overnight — yesterday’s tape was real positioning, not day-trading churn; only the short-dated NVDA call chase partly closed same-day.

Why it matters

The overnight confirms tell us this week’s hedging and single-name flows are sticking as positions — and today’s session extended the same pattern. The protection was targeted, not panicked: QQQ September $680 puts swept on the ask, CRWD August puts printed at 400x prior open interest ahead of its late-August report, and AAPL July 31 puts — expiring the day after earnings — traded at roughly 100x open interest. At the same time, the day’s largest single-name print was upside: 100,000 FHN November $27 calls bought on the floor, all opening, alongside continued long-dated MU call activity.

Our read: the block and sweep activity describes a market buying event insurance into earnings season while keeping longer-dated upside on — consistent with a pullback inside a bull regime rather than a regime change. The MPI composite held at 66, Bull · early, as of Wednesday’s close; today’s tape softened prices without producing the kind of premium stampede that marks genuine regime stress.

What to watch into Friday

  • SPY $747.88 — today’s low and the level to watch. A close below would break the floor of this week’s range; $754.81, Wednesday’s close, is the reference on the other side.
  • QQQ $702.61 — today’s low. A close below would extend the slide to a third session; $713.60, today’s high, caps the day’s range above.
  • VIX 17.23 — today’s intraday high. A close above it would extend the two-session climb off 15.67 and mark a shift in how the market is pricing near-dated risk.
  • Friday is July monthly expiration. Today’s index tape ran heavy at the SPX 7,450–7,555 strikes — the zone where expiration-day flows concentrated; how price behaves around it is the structural tell.
  • IBM reports Wednesday 22 July after the close. Yesterday’s flagged July 24 $220 puts confirmed overnight as new positioning ahead of the print — the hedge is now on the books.
  • AAPL reports 30 July. Today’s repeated buying in July 31 $335 puts — expiring the day after the report — printed at roughly 100x prior open interest.

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.

TickerWhat printedRead
QQQ$2.2M swept ask-side in Sept 18 $680 puts, descending fillsQuarter-out downside protection, sized like a program rather than a punt
FHN100,000 Nov 20 $27 calls bought on the floor, $10.4M, all opening, 225x prior OILargest single-name call print of the day — long-dated regional-bank upside
CRWD$4.3M ask-side in Aug 14 $195 puts, 406x prior OIPre-earnings protection; the size says institutional, not retail
AAPL~$3.2M of repeated buying in July 31 $335 puts, ~100x prior OIContract expires the day after the 30 July report — event insurance
NVDA$1.0M ask-side in July 27 $200 puts, 38x prior OINear-dated downside hedge after a 2.4% down day in the stock
GS~$2.4M ask-side across Nov $880/$885 puts, descending fillsFar-OTM financials protection out to November
MU$2.3M in Dec 18 $1000 calls, fills on the bidCall supply at the strike — premium being sold into the semi rally, not chased
META$122M dark-pool block at $662 in the post-close windowLargest single-stock off-exchange print of the session

The set-up

A tech-led down day inside a bull regime, with the options market doing exactly what the OI confirms said it started doing yesterday: converting volume into held protection. QQQ’s single-session IV-rank jump was the day’s cleanest tell — tech risk repriced while broad-market risk barely moved. Friday’s monthly expiration clears a large slug of near-dated open interest either way; today’s lows on SPY and QQQ are the marks the next session inherits, and the earnings-dated puts in IBM, AAPL, and CRWD are now on the books as positioning the ledger will score.

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. The MPI value in the strip reflects the 15 July close; SPY, QQQ, and VIX reflect today’s 16 July 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.

New here? Start Here · Pulse Lab · Accountability Ledger · Trading Academy

Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 15 July 2026

MPI 66 Regime Bull · early SPY $754.81 +0.40% QQQ $717.74 -0.27% VIX 15.67 As of 15 July 2026 close

15 July 2026 — EOD read. Publication note: this post was published on 16 July, after our end-of-day publishing job failed to fire on the 15th. The data below is the full 15 July session, unaltered. We publish late rather than not at all, and we say so rather than backdate quietly.

Fast read
  • Sellers pressed calls all morning, then the whole move was bought back — SPY closed at the high.
  • Index volatility collapsed to a 15-handle while semis paid up for insurance ahead of TSM.
  • The regime classifier flipped to Bull · early; the level to watch is QQQ 714.

What happened

The session ran two different tapes. From the open to about 12:35 PM ET, our out-of-the-money market tide bled relentlessly: net call premium fell from +$3.9M at the bell to −$228M, with net volume touching −680K — three and a half hours of one-directional call-selling and put-buying. QQQ broke Tuesday’s low, printing 710.23. Then it stopped. By 2:00 PM the tide had recovered to −$171M, and by the close SPY had erased the entire decline to finish $754.81, +0.40%, one basis point off its session high of $755.58 — after opening at $754.24 and trading down to $750.20.

The internals never confirmed the fear. SPY’s own net premium finished at −$39.2M on a $1.7B two-way premium day — noise. VIX closed 15.67, down from 16.50 and a full point below Monday’s IBM spike, with index IV rank at 13. QQQ closed 717.74 (−0.27%), well off the low but the day’s laggard. NVDA finished $207.63, −1.97%, with −$58.0M net premium — an exact mirror of Tuesday’s +$58.1M. The rotation bid that carried Monday’s IBM aftermath gave the whole thing back in one session.

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. This is the first published run of this check.

ContractFlagged 14 JulyOI change overnightVerdict
QQQ Aug 21 $720P7,903 contracts, 7,061 ask-side (incl. a 5,724-lot 3:40 PM sweep)11,604 → 17,677 (+6,073)Confirmed opening (77%)
QQQ Aug 21 $690P11,064, predominantly multi-leg+9,031Confirmed (82%) — but spread legs, structure rather than naked direction
QQQ Aug 21 $700P3,086+722Partial (23%)

The headline print we flagged Tuesday — the late-day QQQ August 720 put sweep — became real open interest overnight and traded in the money on Wednesday’s break. Our Tuesday read was that the rally was being ridden with insurance on. The insurance was the trade. The single-name legs from Tuesday’s radar were multi-leg structures whose confirm windows are ambiguous by construction; we report only what the open-interest data can settle cleanly.

Why it matters

A market that sells $228M of calls by lunch and closes at the session high is not a market with conviction — it is a market with a calendar. Every desk on the tape knew Taiwan Semiconductor reported at 2:00 AM ET, and the entire complex flattened into it. The tell is in the volatility split: index IV rank finished at 13 while semiconductor and memory names carried 60–85. Nobody is paying for index insurance; everybody is paying for chip insurance. That is a market pricing an idiosyncratic event, not a macro one.

Underneath, the composite kept improving while the tape churned. The MPI printed 66 (Bull band) with the regime classifier flipping to Bull · early at 80% model confidence — trend 82.7, breadth 89.3, credit 87.4, and a volatility sub-score that jumped to 77.7 as VIX broke 16. For the record and without revision: our 14 July Pulse published the regime as Sideways. On the 15 July close it flipped to Bull · early. That flip is a scored event in the Accountability Ledger, resolved at 21 trading days like every other regime read we publish.

What to watch into Thursday

  • QQQ 714.34 / 710.23 — Tuesday’s low and Wednesday’s low. QQQ broke the first and reclaimed it by the close; the pair now brackets the range that the TSM print resolves.
  • QQQ 720 — the strike where 17,677 contracts of confirmed institutional put open interest now sits. It is the most consequential number on the board: a reclaim would put that wall underwater, a rejection would leave it in charge.
  • SPY 755.58 — the session high, and the first level a continuation would have to clear. Dealer positioning at the index remains net positive gamma, which historically dampens moves in both directions.
  • VIX 15.64 — Wednesday’s low. Index volatility is now at the bottom of its one-year 19th percentile; there is little cushion left in the price of index insurance.
  • The IV split — index 13 vs semis 60–85. Whether that gap closes by semis calming or by the index catching up is the cleanest read available on whether TSM stays idiosyncratic.

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.

TickerWhat printedRead
SOXX$2.30M ask-side floor trade, Aug 7 $550 puts, 2:21 PM ET — 12× volume/open-interest, IV 62The day’s only fresh institutional print after 2 PM, and it bought semis downside into the print. Same direction as Tuesday’s confirmed QQQ wall.
NVDA$855K ask-side sweep, 20 July $207.50 calls, 1:10 PM ETShort-dated upside bought while the name’s own net premium ran −$58M. Isolated — no repeat cluster followed it into the close.
VRT$1.36M ask-side sweep, 24 July $300 calls, 11:13 AM ET, IV 84Single print, no follow-on. AI-infrastructure adjacent; the vol paid is top-decile for the name.
IBM$1.30M bid-side sweep, 24 July $220 puts, plus Sept/Dec put sweeps ($391K–$660K), 9:58–10:03 AM ETDay-two positioning after the 23% collapse, spread across three expiries. Rich IV (47–69) means the crowd has arrived.
CVX$400K ask-side sweep, 24 July $180 calls, 10:42 AM ET, IV 28Cheapest vol on the radar. One print, no catalyst attached — a repeat would matter more than the print itself.
TRI$1.44M bid-side floor, Sept 18 $95 puts, 11:35 AM ET, IV 53Low-historic-volume floor trade in an industrial name three weeks ahead of earnings.
MSFTRepeated same-day $390/$392.50 call sweeps, 9:34–9:54 AM ET, ~$1.9M combinedInstructive rather than actionable: same-day upside bought into the teeth of a −$221M call-selling tide. Sweeps are prints, not conclusions.

The set-up

Wednesday was a coiled spring, and the coil is mechanical, not emotional: dealers hold net positive gamma at the index, which mathematically dampens the tape, while every dollar of genuine fear went into chip-specific insurance ahead of one 2 AM print. The composite improved into that setup — MPI 66, regime Bull · early, VIX with a 15-handle — which is exactly the configuration that makes a single-name shock look like a market event when it isn’t. Our read: the index is calm because it has been paid to be calm, and the semis complex is expensive because that is where the actual uncertainty lives. Thursday’s tape either releases the coil or confirms the range that Tuesday’s confirmed 720 put wall has been enforcing all week.

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. Dollar figures are aggregate premium observed in the named prints.

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.

New here? Start Here · Pulse Lab · Accountability Ledger · Trading Academy

Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 14 July 2026

MPI 61 Regime Sideways SPY $751.83 +0.36% QQQ $719.69 +1.12% VIX 16.50 As of 14 July 2026 close

14 July 2026 — EOD read. Published later than usual tonight after a data-connector outage; the numbers below are the full end-of-session tape.

What happened

IBM pre-announced a second-quarter miss before the open and fell roughly 23% — its worst session since 1987 — and the market’s answer was rotation, not retreat. SPY closed $751.83, up +0.36% from Monday’s $749.17, after tagging $753.34 intraday. QQQ did the heavier lifting: +1.12% to $719.69 off a $714.34 low. VIX gave back Monday’s entire spike, fading from a 17.56 morning high to close 16.50 versus 17.16. NVDA — the designated beneficiary of the very budget shift IBM blamed — closed +4.06% at $211.80 with +$58M in net options premium behind the move.

Market-wide the tape ran 32.3M calls against 24.5M puts (P/C 0.76), with $24.7B in call premium versus $15.8B in puts. SPY’s net options premium flipped to +$22.2M from Monday’s −$143.2M — a full reversal of yesterday’s hedging impulse at the index level. QQQ, notably, did not follow: its options ran a 1.05 put/call with −$22.3M net premium even as the ETF rallied. Off-exchange, the day’s block tape clustered hard in financials as bank earnings opened — WFC $292M, C $260M after Citi’s premarket report, AXP $192M, TD $138M — alongside a $300M META print at $661 and a $129M LRCX block.

Why it matters

A 23% single-name collapse in a Dow component that leaves both indexes green and VIX lower is a breadth statement: the market treated IBM as an idiosyncratic repricing, and the flow shows where the money went — into the AI-hardware complex IBM’s own guidance blamed (NVDA, semicap, memory). That is consistent with the regime read: Sideways with a bullish tilt, absorbing shocks by rotating rather than de-risking.

The counterweight is in the details. QQQ’s bounce carried its hedges with it — repeated ask-side prints in the August $720 puts totaled ~$2.8M while the ETF rallied, and QQQ IV rank still sits at 60.7 versus SPY’s 16.9. The options market is pricing tech-specific event risk, not broad-market risk. And in the hottest corner of the IBM-rotation trade — memory — the prints leaned protective: SNDK call premium sold at the highs, downside puts bought. Our read: the rotation is real, but it is being ridden with insurance on.

What to watch into Wednesday

  • SPY $753.34 — today’s high. A close above would mark a new high for the move; $748.66 (today’s low) is the reference underneath.
  • QQQ $722.29 / $714.34 — the day’s range brackets. The 1.05 put/call and negative net premium behind today’s rally mean the next leg, either way, starts from a hedged book.
  • VIX 16.15 — the session low. A settle below it would put volatility fully back to pre-IBM levels; today’s 16.50 close already unwound most of the spike.
  • NVDA $212.55 — today’s high. Flow supported the move (+$58M net premium) while fresh August $200–210 puts printed against it — momentum with a seatbelt.
  • QQQ IV rank 60.7 vs SPY 16.9 — the spread between tech event-risk pricing and index calm. Whether that gap closes or widens is the cleanest tell on whether IBM stays idiosyncratic.
  • Bank earnings continue — the financials dark-pool cluster (WFC, C, AXP, TD) marks where repositioning already happened; reactions to the next reports land on a repositioned book.

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.

TickerWhat printedRead
NVDA+$58M net premium on a +4.06% day; $3.0M ask-side Aug $210 puts and $2.3M Aug $200 puts against itHardware side of the IBM rotation — strength bought, then insured. Hedged momentum, not distribution.
META$1.6M ask-side sweep in deep-ITM Aug $600 calls; $300M dark-pool block at $661Stock-replacement structure ahead of the 7/29 print — leveraged upside with defined premium at risk.
LRCX$1.1M ask-side Aug $350 calls; $129M dark-pool block at $346Semicap accumulation pattern — options and off-exchange stock pointing the same direction into 7/29 earnings.
SNDK$1.0M bid-side July $1760 calls; $1.2M ask-side July $1400 putsMemory is the rotation’s poster child, yet premium was sold at the highs and downside bought — protective prints in the hottest corner.
AMD$1.1M ask-side next-day $550 puts at 30× volume/OIOne-session protection at the money after the run to $550 — short-dated caution with no earnings date attached.
QQQ~$2.8M ask-side Aug $720 puts across repeated printsIndex hedges rebuilt into the bounce — participation with insurance, the day’s defining structure.
SPXSept $7,595 prints on both sides ($3.4M each); Sept 30 $7,000 puts and $8,100 callsSeptember wings being built in both directions — positioning consistent with range expansion, direction agnostic.
C / WFC$260M and $292M dark-pool blocks as Citi opened bank earningsFinancials repositioned off-exchange on day one of earnings week — the block tape moved before the narrative.

The set-up

Yesterday’s read was concentrated short-dated put hedging into a risk-off Monday; today resolved it — the hedges monetized or expired into a rotation day, SPY’s net premium flipped positive, and the money that left legacy tech showed up in hardware within hours. What did not change: QQQ’s options book is still defensive under the surface, tech IV remains elevated against a calm index, and September wing structures got bigger. The tape’s message is a market willing to rally, holding its insurance while it does. MPI printed 61 — first close in the Bull band since the regime flipped — with the classifier still reading Sideways; that tension, scored nightly in the ledger, is the thing to watch resolve.

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. Dollar figures are aggregate premium observed in the named prints; volume-over-OI activity is unconfirmed as new positioning until the next morning’s open-interest update.

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.

New here? Start Here · Pulse Lab · Accountability Ledger · Trading Academy

Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 13 July 2026

MPI 67 Regime Sideways SPY $749.17 -0.77% QQQ $711.74 -1.90% VIX 17.16 SPY/QQQ/VIX as of 13 July 2026 close MPI as of 10 July 2026 close

13 July 2026 — EOD read. Monday opened the week with a genuine risk-off session, the first real crack in the tape since the quarter began. Tech absorbed the bulk of the selling, the vol complex finally woke up, and the flow we tracked all day leaned defensive in the exact pockets that had been running hottest.

What happened

SPY closed at $749.17, down 0.77% from Friday’s $754.95, after printing a session low of $748.00. QQQ took the harder hit, closing at $711.74, down 1.90% from $725.51 — nearly a full 2.5x the S&P’s decline, with semis leading the downside. NVDA fell 3.52% to $203.53. The VIX jumped from 15.03 to 17.16, a 14% pop that pulled it off the floor of its one-year range in a single session.

Market-wide, the options tape actually held a call tilt — 34.5M calls traded against 29.5M puts (0.86 put/call), with $22.0B in call premium versus $17.5B in put premium. But the index complex told a different story: SPY ran a 1.25 put/call on the day with net premium at roughly -$143M, and QQQ ran 1.11 puts-to-calls. That divergence — single names still chasing calls while index desks bought protection — is a classic distribution-day signature. QQQ’s IV rank ratcheted from 52 to 67 in one session; the market is repricing tech risk, not just marking prices down.

Why it matters

Our regime read heading into this week was already Sideways with a bullish underlying bias (MPI 67 off Friday’s close), and today’s action fits that frame rather than breaking it: a chop regime punishes crowded momentum first. The vol move is the tell worth respecting. VIX at 17+ from a sub-10th-percentile starting point means hedges that were nearly free last week now cost real money — and the flow we flagged today shows institutions paying up for them anyway, concentrated in memory and AI-adjacent semis that led the last leg higher.

Our read is that this is a positioning reset inside an intact broader uptrend until proven otherwise — SPY remains well above its 50-day — but the next two sessions decide whether the vol bid sticks. Bank earnings start tomorrow morning and give the tape its first fundamental catalyst of the week.

What to watch into Tuesday

  • SPY $748.00 — today’s low held on the close by pennies. A break opens $745; a reclaim of $752 (today’s open zone) neutralizes the day.
  • QQQ $710.08 — session low and the line in the sand. Below it, $705 is the next shelf; bulls want $718 back.
  • VIX 17.50 — a second consecutive close pressing this area confirms the vol regime shift; a fade back under 16 tags today as a one-day flush.
  • Citi reports premarket — the bank earnings kickoff. We flagged an upside call floor block in C today (see table); financials’ reaction sets Tuesday’s opening tone.
  • NVDA $200–203 — the round number sits just below today’s close with put premium dominating the day’s tape. How it behaves there tells you whether semis stabilize.
  • QQQ IV rank 67 — premium is suddenly rich. Premium sellers get paid better; outright long-options buyers now need the move to show up fast.
  • Names on our radar

    TickerSignalRead
    MURepeated hits and sweeps in the 7/24 $800–850 puts, over $4M in premium, plus Aug $900 puts boughtConcentrated short-dated downside hedging in the memory leader after its monster run; some Aug $920 call buying on the other side keeps it two-way
    SNDK7/24 $1,500 puts traded 6x+ open interest across repeated prints; Oct $1,900 puts bought ~$2.7MHeavy near-dated downside activity — unconfirmed as new positioning until tomorrow’s OI update, but the clustering is hard to ignore
    INTCAug and 7/24 $120 calls printed bid-side; Sep $80 puts bought ~$1.4MTwo-way positioning ahead of 7/23 earnings — upside calls being sold to fund downside cover reads as fading the rally
    C7/24 $145 call floor block, ~$1.9M paid ask-side, 10x open interestInstitutional upside bet placed hours before tomorrow’s premarket earnings print
    AMD7/17 $522.50 puts bought ~$3.6M, roughly 9.5x open interestFast-money downside protection into Friday’s expiry with spot at $535
    META7/24 $775 call sweeps, 200+ prints, ~$1.8M ask-sideFar-OTM upside speculation (spot $659) into the 7/29 earnings print — lottery-ticket profile
    NVDASep-2027 $215 puts sold ~$1.7M bid-sideLong-dated put selling on a -3.5% day — someone is happy to own it lower and collect while they wait
    AVGO$200M dark-pool block at $384.05 on the EOD tapeLargest single-name off-exchange print of the day; semis getting repositioned in size, direction unknowable from the print alone
    EWY$252M dark-pool block at $168.02Korea exposure moving in size off-exchange — the biggest block on today’s tape alongside a $240M SPY print

    The set-up

    The desk-flow tape said hedge, not panic: index put premium dominated, single-name put buying clustered in the extended memory trade, and yet long-dated put sellers showed up in NVDA and lottery calls kept printing in META. That mix is consistent with a market taking chips off its hottest tables while keeping the broader bull thesis on. With MPI at 67 and the regime classifier still reading Sideways, we treat today as the chop doing its job — until SPY loses $748 and the VIX confirms above 17.50, this is a reset inside the range, and bank earnings get the first vote tomorrow morning.

    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. Index and single-name levels are exchange closing prints for 13 July 2026; the MPI/regime values in the strip reflect the 10 July 2026 close, the latest completed run of our composite. Volume-over-OI observations are unconfirmed as new positioning until the next morning’s open-interest update.

    This is research, not advice. Position sizing, risk management, and exit discipline are yours.

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