3 August 2026 — EOD read. Regular editions resume today after last week’s backfilled capsules, and August opened with the broadest risk bid in weeks. Here is what printed on the first session of the month, and what the flow said underneath it.
- Broad rally to open August: SPY +1.42% to $757.67, and QQQ’s first close above $700.
- Market-wide premium ran nearly two calls for every put; index hedging stayed long-dated, not urgent.
- CAT reports before Tuesday’s open — its $840 puts were the day’s clearest event print.
What happened
The first session of August picked up where July’s month-end recovery left off and accelerated. SPY gapped up from Friday’s $747.03 close, opened at $749.44, and never looked back — closing at $757.67, up 1.42%, off a $758.58 high. QQQ did more: +1.76% to $700.07, its first close above the $700 round number, with a $701.59 intraday high. NVDA added 2.93% to $206.64 after trading as low as $196.85 in the morning, a near five-percent intraday range that resolved entirely upward. VIX slipped to 15.86 from Friday’s 15.99 — a fresh low for the move — and SPY’s 30-day IV rank compressed to 12.5, QQQ’s to 48.7 from 54 on Friday.
The flow underneath matched the tape. Market-wide, 44.4M calls traded against 31.2M puts — a 0.70 put/call — and the premium split was starker: $31.9B in call premium against $17.5B in puts, nearly two-to-one. The put tilt that ran through all of earnings week stayed concentrated where it has lived for a month: SPY’s own put/call by volume held at 1.11 with put premium ($1.23B) still a hair ahead of calls ($1.22B), while QQQ flipped to 0.94 — calls outpacing puts on the index that just reclaimed $700. Net options premium finished positive on both: +$84M SPY, +$61M QQQ, +$70M NVDA.
Why it matters
The composite carried a 65 and a Bull · early regime out of July, and the first August session traded consistent with both — breadth in the single-name call tape, an index put bid that is persistent but dated, and a vol market willing to price calm with VIX under 16. Our read: the divergence between SPY’s flow (still insurance-tilted) and QQQ’s (now call-tilted) is the dominant tell on today’s tape. The hedging that remains is structural — Friday’s largest single options print was $18.4M of June 2027 SPX $6500 puts, tail insurance struck roughly 14% below spot with eleven months of time, not a bet on this week.
The single-name tape was two-sided in the one name that matters most. NVDA saw both aggressive upside paper — August 14 $212.5 calls bought on the ask at five times open interest — and near-dated at-the-money protection in the August 7 $207.5 puts at nearly ten times open interest, both inside the window that ends with its August 26 report. Volume at those levels is unconfirmed as new positioning until tomorrow morning’s open-interest update; the confirm runs in tomorrow’s edition.
What to watch into Tuesday
- SPY $758.58 — today’s high and the upper reference of the move; $748.80 is the session low and the top of this morning’s gap. A close back inside the gap would mark the first crack in the three-session advance.
- QQQ $700 — first close above the round number, and the strike where $6.1M of August calls changed hands on the bid today. A hold above would extend the reclaim; a slip back below would return the level to contested ground.
- VIX 15.86 — the lowest close of the move, down from 20.88 last Wednesday. A push back above 16.30 (today’s high) would be the first sign the vol floor is firming rather than falling.
- CAT reports premarket Tuesday — 500 August 7 $840 puts went off on the ask today at four times open interest with the stock at $830. What the open does with that strike is the first scored observation of the week.
- NVDA $207.50 — the strike both sides paid up for today. The two-sided paper marks it as the level the options market treated as the dividing line on this tape.
- Friday’s July jobs report — the week’s scheduled macro test, the same print the Fed dissents put in play.
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 | Aug 14 $212.5 calls — ~4,755 bought ask-side ($1.7M), volume 5.2x open interest | Fresh upside paper dated inside the Aug 26 earnings window |
| NVDA | Aug 7 $207.5 puts — ~4,805 ask-side ($1.7M), volume 9.6x open interest | Near-dated at-the-money protection; the tape ran two-sided all afternoon |
| QQQ | Aug 21 $700 calls — 4,395 sold bid-side ($6.1M) with spot at the strike | Premium supplied at the round number the index just reclaimed |
| MSFT | Aug 7 $470 calls — $3.3M hit the bid, roughly $20 in the money | Reads as monetization of existing upside rather than fresh chase |
| META | Sep 18 $595 calls — ~1,000 ask-side ($3.3M), volume 1.7x open interest | At-the-money upside paper with seven weeks of time |
| CAT | Aug 7 $840 puts — 500 ask-side ($1.8M), volume 4x open interest | The day’s clearest event print, dated through Tuesday’s premarket report |
| NBIS | Aug 7 $220 puts — 1,470 ask-side ($2.6M), volume 17x open interest | Aggressive near-dated downside paper ahead of the Aug 12 report |
| AMAT | Sep 18 $600 calls — 500 ask-side ($1.6M) with stock at $518 | Far-out-of-the-money upside dated past the Aug 13 print |
| SPX | Jun 2027 $6500 puts — $18.4M, the day’s largest single options print | Long-dated tail insurance struck ~14% below spot |
| INTC | $207M dark-pool block at $91.00 after the bell — 2.28M shares | Largest off-exchange print of the session |
The set-up
August opened with the composite at 65, the regime unchanged at Bull · early, and the tape doing what early-bull tapes do: single-name call flow broadening, index protection persisting but pushed out the calendar, and vol drifting to new lows for the move. The prints worth carrying forward are the ones with dates attached — CAT’s puts expire Friday against a Tuesday-morning report, NVDA’s two-sided paper brackets the $207.50 line into its own event window, and QQQ’s $700 is now both a closing level and a strike where real premium changed hands. Tomorrow morning’s open-interest update tells us which of today’s volume was real positioning; the confirm table runs in tomorrow’s edition, and every row above is already frozen in the ledger either way.
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/regime values shown reflect the 31 July 2026 close; index and volatility prints are today’s exchange closes.
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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