Daily Pulse – Page 8

Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 28 July 2026

  MPI 54
  Regime Bull · early
  SPY $740.86 +0.24%
  QQQ $675.49 -0.97%
  VIX 18.21
  As of 28 July 2026 close

28 July 2026 — EOD read. A split session: the broad tape firmed while big tech gave ground, and the options tape spent the day positioning around the heaviest earnings window of the summer.

Fast read

SPY added 0.24% while QQQ fell 0.97% — a split tape with tech on the downside.
Index flow stayed put-heavy; single-name flow crowded into MSFT, META, and AAPL earnings.
MSFT and META report Wednesday after the close — the next session’s dominant catalyst.

What happened

SPY finished at $740.86, up 0.24% from Monday’s $739.09 — its second straight close below the 50-day average near $744.9. QQQ went the other way, dropping 0.97% to $675.49 after tagging a low of $667.88. Notably, NVDA was not the drag: it closed $197.01, up 0.25%, which places today’s tech weakness elsewhere in the large caps. The VIX eased to 18.21 from 18.67 — the volatility market treated the tech dip as rotation, not stress.

Market-wide, 33.8M calls traded against 28.0M puts (0.83 put/call), with $24.6B in call premium versus $22.9B in put premium. The index complex leaned the other way: SPY ran 1.23 puts per call and QQQ ran 1.03 — defensive inventory kept building at the index level even as the single-name tape stayed constructive.

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.

Contract	Flagged	OI change overnight	Verdict
NVDA July 31 $197.5 calls	29,882 contracts	+17,414 (58%)	Confirmed opening
AMD Aug 28 $515 puts	2,528	+2,496 (99%)	Confirmed opening
QQQ July 31 $680 calls	21,739	+4,003 (18%)	Partially confirmed
SPX Sep 7,445 calls (straddle leg)	2,299	+400 (17%)	Partially confirmed
SPX Sep 7,445 puts (straddle leg)	2,290	+725 (32%)	Partially confirmed
SPXW Aug 4 7,250 puts	2,696	+2,525 (94%)	Confirmed opening
SPCX Aug $115 calls	1,339	+1,079 (81%)	Confirmed opening
SPCX Sep $115 calls	1,315	+1,079 (82%)	Confirmed opening
SPCX Oct $115 calls	1,313	+1,172 (89%)	Confirmed opening
TSLA July 29 $307.5 puts	26,561	+8,457 (32%)	Partially confirmed
TSLA July 31 $310 calls	17,447	+6,600 (38%)	Partially confirmed
MU July 31 $955 puts	216	+50 (23%)	Partially confirmed
GLW Jun ’27 $180 calls	726	+644 (89%)	Confirmed opening

Seven of thirteen converted to new open interest at 58% or better — the dated, deliberate prints (AMD, SPCX, GLW, the August index puts) became real inventory, while the short-dated QQQ and TSLA volume was mostly same-day traffic.

Why it matters

Our composite sits at 54 — neutral — with the regime classifier still reading early-cycle bull, unchanged from recent sessions. Today’s divergence fits that picture: money rotated within the tape rather than leaving it. SPY up with QQQ down, VIX lower on a red tech day, and a market-wide put/call of 0.83 all describe repositioning, not de-risking.

The off-exchange tape reinforced the size of that repositioning: a $255.9M ORCL block at $119.96 and a 2.5M-share, $223.8M NEE cross led a late-day cluster of prior-reference-price prints that also included WFC ($120.9M), SYK ($81.6M), DELL ($78.4M), and SOXX ($78.7M). Our read: the earnings window is the dominant tell on today’s tape — most of what printed, on both the options and dark-pool sides, was inventory being staged ahead of Wednesday and Thursday nights.

What to watch into Wednesday

SPY $735.98 — today’s low, and the level to watch. A close below would mark a break of this week’s range floor; the 50-day near $744.9 is the reference overhead, with SPY now two closes beneath it.
QQQ $667.88 — today’s low. A close below would mark the first lower low since the July leg began; $682.12 (Monday’s close) is the reference on the other side.
MSFT and META report Wednesday after the close; VRT before the open. The bulk of this week’s single-name options positioning concentrates on those prints.
AAPL reports Thursday after the close — today’s ask-side call accumulation makes it the other crowded name on the tape.
SPX 7,350 — Friday’s heaviest fresh put strike, sitting roughly 1% below the 7,428.78 close. It marks where near-dated downside inventory is being kept.
VIX 18.21 with the 3-month term still upward-sloping — the vol market did not confirm today’s tech weakness; a move through the upper 19s would mark a change in that stance.

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
SPX	Sep 7,465 calls and puts hit repeatedly, ~480 contracts a side, ~$15.7M combined	The same two-sided September structure that printed at 7,445 yesterday, rebuilt a tick higher — consistent with a large volatility position, not a directional one.
SPXW	July 31 7,350 puts, 2,000-lot, $4.6M	Friday-expiry downside inventory about 1% below spot; near-dated hedge demand persists.
MU	July 31 $830 calls, $4.2M ask-side, 45× volume over open interest	Aggressive near-the-money upside in a stock trading $820 — unconfirmed as new positioning until tomorrow’s OI update.
MSFT	Mar ’27 $400 calls, $1.4M, mostly bid-side, into Wednesday’s report	Long-dated upside traded to the bid ahead of earnings — reads as trimming, not chasing.
AAPL	Jan ’27 $355 and Sep $305 calls, roughly $6M across sweeps	Ask-side accumulation of upside ahead of Thursday’s report, spread across two expiries.
NVDA	Jan ’28 $195 puts, $3.2M ask-side; Aug $190 puts sold at the bid	Long-dated protection bought while nearer-dated puts were written — a term-structure preference, not a directional flip.
SOXX	Dec ’27 $540 calls swept four times, ~$5.6M against open interest of 3	Fresh far-dated semis upside; the size-versus-OI gap makes tomorrow’s OI update the entire story here.
META	Aug 14 $550 puts, $1.0M floor print, OTM, ahead of Wednesday’s report	Classic pre-earnings downside floor activity in a name reporting in less than 24 hours.
ORCL	$255.9M dark-pool block at $119.96, late session	The largest single off-exchange print of the day, inside the NBBO.
NEE	2.5M shares, $223.8M off-exchange at $89.28	Outsized against roughly 10.5M shares of average daily volume — quiet accumulation-scale size in a utility.

The set-up

Two sessions of the same shape: index-level hedges getting built and confirmed as real inventory, single-name flow concentrating into MSFT, META, and AAPL, and a vol market refusing to price the tech weakness as anything more than rotation. The next two closes carry the event risk the whole week’s tape has been staging for. What printed today is the positioning; Wednesday and Thursday nights are the test of it.

Method note

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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Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 27 July 2026

  MPI 55
  Regime Sideways
  SPY $739.09 +0.02%
  QQQ $682.12 -0.31%
  VIX 18.67
  SPY/QQQ/VIX as of 27 July 2026 close
  MPI as of 24 July 2026 close

27 July 2026 — EOD read. Monday was a single-stock storm inside a becalmed market: NVDA lost five percent while the index pair barely moved, and the options tape spent the session buying the dip in one place and stacking earnings-dated protection in another. Here is what printed and how we read it.

Fast read

NVDA fell 4.99%; the indices barely moved — SPY +0.02%, QQQ -0.31% off a $675.95 low.
Flow bought the dip in index and NVDA calls while AMD drew ~$9M of earnings-dated puts.
Friday’s $32.7M NBIS put block confirmed real — roughly 61% became new open interest overnight.

What happened

NVDA opened at $208.20, printed its high in the first minutes, and never looked back — down 4.99% to $196.51, a $195.44 low, on put volume roughly 61% above its 30-day average and about -$48.6M of net options premium. The indices absorbed it. SPY traded an outside session — a $745.53 high above Friday’s high and a $735.87 low below Friday’s low — and closed at $739.09, up 0.02%. QQQ opened higher at $691.68, slid nearly 16 points to $675.95, then recovered six of them to finish at $682.12, down 0.31%. That close sits under Friday’s $682.48 low — the lower-low marker we flagged in Friday’s post printed. VIX spiked to 19.93 intraday, through Friday’s 19.05 ceiling, and gave all of it back to close at 18.67.

Market-wide, 36.8M calls traded against 30.0M puts — a 0.82 put/call — with put premium at $19.4B against $18.0B in calls. The two index ETFs split: SPY ran puts over calls at 1.09, while QQQ flipped to 0.95 — more calls than puts, against Friday’s 1.18 — and SPY’s net options premium swung positive to +$43.8M while QQQ’s narrowed to -$7.6M. NVDA’s implied-vol rank jumped to 63 from 46 in a session.

Yesterday’s radar — OI confirm

Contract	Flagged	OI change overnight	Verdict
NBIS Aug 7 $170 puts	31,376 contracts, $49.0M	+19,087 (1,564 → 20,651)	Confirmed opening — ~61% became new OI; the floor block was real
NBIS July 31 $170 puts	26,583 contracts, $20.7M	+5,100 (22,044 → 27,144)	Partially confirmed — ~19%
MU Aug 7 $800 puts	17,505 contracts, $54.7M	+14,708 (2,185 → 16,893)	Confirmed opening — ~84% became new OI
MU Aug 21 $930 puts	317 contracts, $3.1M	+88 (1,916 → 2,004)	Partially confirmed — ~28%
QQQ July 31 $700 calls	20,556 contracts, $9.2M	+3,211 (5,210 → 8,421)	Partially confirmed — ~16%
SPX Aug 21 7,500 puts	587 contracts, $9.1M	-188 (39,530 → 39,342)	Not confirmed — OI fell; the shelf did not grow
SPXW July 31 7,220 puts	5,243 contracts, $8.6M	+1,897 (603 → 2,500)	Partially confirmed — ~36%
POWL Feb ’27 $230 calls	1,527 contracts, $9.4M	-710 (1,604 → 894)	Not confirmed — OI fell; the floor print reads as a close, not an opening
ORCL July 31 $120 puts	4,384 contracts, $3.0M	+484 (11,497 → 11,981)	Partially confirmed — ~11%

The single-name insurance was real — the NBIS block and the MU $800s opened and held — while the index-level prints mostly washed out and the POWL floor turned out to be an exit rather than an entry.

Why it matters

Monday drew its line between one stock and the market. NVDA repriced hard, but SPY closed an outside day flat, QQQ recovered six points off its low, and the VIX spike through 19 lasted hours, not the session. The derivatives tape leaned the same way: QQQ ran more calls than puts for the first time in days, $3.9M of at-the-money July 31 $680 calls took the offer at roughly 5x open interest, and $2.3M of NVDA $197.5 calls swept ask-side at 22x open interest into the slide. Our read: the tape treated the NVDA move as a repricing of one name, not a regime event — and the vol market’s round trip is the dominant tell.

The confirm loop earned its keep this morning. Friday’s open question was whether the $32.7M NBIS floor block was real positioning — it was: roughly 61% of the flagged volume became new open interest, and the $170 strike now carries 20,651 contracts against a $187.88 close with the report due 8/6. AMD is printing the same shape next: about $9.1M of in-the-money Aug 28 $515 puts accumulated in four waves ahead of its 8/4 report. The off-exchange tape put the day’s theme in size after the bell — SOXX $111.3M and SMH $75.6M were the two largest non-index prints — while SPY ($146.4M) and QQQ ($85.3M) marked exactly at their closing prices.

What to watch into Tuesday

NVDA $195.44 — Monday’s low, and the level to watch. A close below would extend the slide to a third straight red session; $206.84, Friday’s close, is the reference for a full retrace.
QQQ $675.95 — Monday’s low. The close at $682.12 sits under Friday’s $682.48 low, so the lower-low marker printed; $684.23, Friday’s close, is the reference on the other side.
SPY $745.53 / $735.87 — Monday’s outside range swallowed both of Friday’s extremes; a close beyond either edge would resolve what Monday left unresolved.
VIX 19.05–19.93 — the intraday tape keeps probing above 19 and closing back under it; a close above 19.05 would mark the break the spikes have so far failed to hold.
AMD $515 strike — the week’s heaviest single-name put accumulation sits there ahead of the 8/4 report; Tuesday morning’s open-interest update shows whether Monday’s $9.1M opened.
GLW reports Tuesday premarket — Monday’s $1.5M of Jun ’27 $180 call prints went up bid-side the day before; the ledger scores them either way.

Names on our radar

Ticker	What printed	Read
NVDA	-4.99% to $196.51; $2.3M in July 31 $197.5 calls swept ask-side at ~22x open interest; put volume 61% above its 30-day average	The day’s story — dip-facing call prints against a heavy put tape, at the money, dated this week
AMD	~$9.1M in Aug 28 $515 puts across four waves, in the money against a ~$492 stock, a week before the 8/4 report	The same earnings-bracketing shape the tape just confirmed in NBIS; Tuesday’s OI update is the test
QQQ	$3.9M in July 31 $680 calls, ask-side at ~5x open interest, struck at the money	Dip-facing prints on the index that flipped to more calls than puts on the day
SPX	Sep 18 7,445 straddle prints again — $17.7M combined across both legs	Third session running of the same paired structure at the same strike
SPXW	$6.3M in Aug 4 7,250 puts at 8–16x the strike’s open interest	Tail protection ~2.2% below spot, dated one week out
SPCX	~$4.4M of $115 calls spread across Aug, Sep, and Oct expiries ahead of the 8/4 report	Laddered upside interest into an earnings date, stock near $113
TSLA	~$2.3M of July 29 $307.5 puts hit bids at ~40x open interest; $1.2M of July 31 $310 calls took offers; $71.7M dark-pool block at $309.22	A two-way tape around a flat stock — near-dated downside sold, near-dated upside bought
MU	$1.1M of July 31 $955 puts, bid-side, deep in the money against a $900.20 close	Friday’s Aug 7 $800 puts confirmed ~84% opened this morning; today’s $955 prints hit the bid instead
GLW	$1.5M in Jun ’27 $180 calls, mostly bid-side, the day before its premarket report; stock at $143	Long-dated upside that traded to the bid — the strike was sold, not paid for
SOXX / SMH	Dark pool: $111.3M SOXX at $516.23 and $75.6M SMH at $548.55 after the bell	The day’s theme marked in size off-exchange — the two largest non-index prints

The set-up

The regime classifier still reads Sideways with the MPI at 55, and Monday tested the label harder than the closes suggest: a five-percent repricing in the market’s largest chip name, absorbed by an index tape that finished flat, a vol spike that could not hold 19, and an options tape that bought the dip where it fell and paid for protection where the calendar says risk lives — AMD next week, the same shape the tape just proved real in NBIS. Tuesday’s open-interest update scores Monday’s prints; the Accountability Ledger scores everything else.

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. Index closes above are Monday’s; the MPI snapshot is keyed to Friday’s close, as the composite updates on a one-session lag.

This is research, not advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security.

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Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 24 July 2026

  MPI 55
  Regime Sideways
  SPY $738.93 +0.10%
  QQQ $684.23 -1.12%
  VIX 18.58
  SPY/QQQ/VIX as of 24 July 2026 close
  MPI as of 23 July 2026 close

24 July 2026 — EOD read. Friday closed the week with a split tape: the broad market finished fractionally green while tech absorbed the session’s selling, and the options tape spent the day pricing protection rather than exits. Here is what printed and how we read it.

Fast read

Tech sold, the broad tape held: QQQ -1.12%, SPY +0.10%, VIX eased to 18.58.
Puts out-traded calls on both index ETFs; NBIS drew roughly $52M of earnings-dated put premium.
QQQ $682.48 is the level to watch; six of eight Thursday prints confirmed as real positioning.

What happened

SPY added 0.10% to close at $738.93 after tagging $743.72 in the morning and giving nearly all of it back — the close sat about $1.64 off the session low of $737.29. QQQ never saw green: it opened below Thursday’s close, slid to $682.48 in the afternoon, and finished at $684.23, down 1.12% — a wide single-day gap between the two indices. NVDA eased 0.92% to $206.84 on put volume roughly a third above its 30-day average. The vol gauge shrugged at all of it: VIX closed at 18.58, down on the day, after an early look at 19.05.

Market-wide, 39.1M calls traded against 34.0M puts — a 0.87 put/call by volume — but premium told the opposite story: $19.8B changed hands in puts against $18.0B in calls, meaning larger average tickets on the downside. Each index ETF individually ran puts over calls by volume — SPY at 1.26, QQQ at 1.18 — and both closed with net options premium in the red (-$34.7M and -$37.0M respectively). The stress asymmetry shows cleanest in implied volatility: QQQ’s IV rank sits near 76 against SPY’s 28.

Yesterday’s radar — OI confirm

Contract	Flagged	OI change overnight	Verdict
QQQ July 24 $690 puts	92,102 contracts, $37.2M	+4,506 (15,865 → 20,371)	Not confirmed — ~5% became OI; same-day trades and closes dominated
QQQ Aug $693 calls (straddle leg)	5,663 contracts, $11.8M	+5,011 (103 → 5,114)	Confirmed opening — ~88% became new OI
QQQ Aug $693 puts (straddle leg)	5,518 contracts, $11.3M	+4,855 (323 → 5,178)	Confirmed opening — ~88% became new OI
MU July 31 $950 puts	1,379 contracts, $6.8M	+604 (1,465 → 2,069)	Confirmed opening — ~44% became new OI
GOOGL Jan ’28 $300 puts	927 contracts, $3.5M	+745 (3,843 → 4,588)	Confirmed opening — ~80% became new OI
LMT Sep $570 puts	443 contracts, $1.3M	+255 (200 → 455)	Confirmed opening — ~58% became new OI
NBIS Sep $320 calls	653 contracts, $1.4M	-91 (1,496 → 1,405)	Not confirmed — OI fell; closing or same-day activity
FIX Aug $1,780 calls	52 contracts, $1.0M	+47 (17 → 64)	Confirmed opening — ~90% became new OI

Six of eight became real positioning — the August straddle and the single-name downside prints were opened and held; the expiring-day put chase and the NBIS call print were not.

Why it matters

Friday’s tape drew a line between rotation and de-risking, and the evidence landed on rotation. An index down more than a percent with VIX finishing lower is not what forced liquidation looks like. The off-exchange tape agreed: about $246M of QQQ printed at $684.23 — the closing price — right after the bell, marks at the level rather than through it, and the day’s largest single-name blocks (NFLX $121M, AVGO $82M) went up at or near market. The one seller-shaped print was DDOG: $63.9M roughly 2% below its quoted band. Our read: the flow bought insurance without hitting stock, and that distinction is the dominant tell on today’s tape.

Single-name flow keeps concentrating in dated protection. NBIS drew roughly $52M of put premium bracketing its August 6 report — including a $32.7M floor block that traded at nearly 20x the strike’s open interest — and MU’s ladder of August puts beneath a $921 stock added more rungs. Thursday’s version of the same pattern proved mostly real: six of eight flagged prints became new open interest this morning, which is the strongest confirmation rate we’ve logged since the loop began.

What to watch into Monday

QQQ $682.48 — Friday’s low, and the level to watch. A close below would mark a second straight lower low; $691.96, Thursday’s close, is the reference on the other side, and a close back above it would retrace the entire slide.
SPY $743.72 / $737.29 — Friday’s range. A second session of green SPY against red QQQ would extend the rotation observation; both legs inside this range would leave the split tape unresolved.
VIX 19.05 — Friday’s intraday high. A close above it would mark an upside range break on a gauge that just finished lower on a red tech day.
SPX 7,350–7,375 — where Friday’s July 31 put prints clustered; 7,500 remains the August shelf, now 39,530 contracts of open interest and still absorbing size.
NBIS Monday OI update — whether Friday’s $32.7M floor block became new open interest is the tape’s own answer on the week’s largest bearish print; we score it in Monday’s post.
NVDA $204.81 — Friday’s low. Put volume ran a third above its 30-day average; a repeat Monday would make it a pattern rather than a print.

Names on our radar

Ticker	What printed	Read
NBIS	$32.7M floor block in Aug 7 $170 puts — 20,282 contracts, ~20x the strike’s open interest, all opening, three sessions before the 8/6 report	The single largest bearish print on our tape this week; unconfirmed as positioning until Monday’s OI update
NBIS	$16.2M more in July 31 $170 puts, swept in ascending fills	Same strike, nearer date — the day’s downside premium totals ~$52M against a $187.77 close
MU	Repeated prints in Aug 7 $800 puts (~$2.2M) and Aug 21 $930 puts ($1.5M)	The insurance ladder under a $921 stock keeps adding rungs; Thursday’s $950 puts confirmed as opened this morning
QQQ	$1.1M in July 31 $700 calls, ask-side sweeps into the afternoon slide	The one notable upside print on an index down day — struck 2.3% above Friday’s close
SPX	~$3.6M added to Aug 21 7,500 puts, a strike already carrying 39,530 contracts of OI	The August hedge shelf keeps growing
SPXW	$2.1M in July 31 7,220 puts at ~6x the strike’s open interest	Tail protection ~2.6% below spot, dated to next Friday
POWL	$7.1M floor print in Feb ’27 $230 calls — at the money, a strike with almost no prior volume, ahead of the 8/3 report	Long-dated upside interest appearing where none existed
ORCL	$1.35M in July 31 $120 puts with the stock at $114.85	In-the-money downside prints dated next Friday — protection priced for now, not later
DDOG	$63.9M dark-pool block at $246.86, roughly 2% below the closing quote band	The day’s one clearly seller-shaped off-exchange mark
NFLX	$120.9M dark-pool print at $70.09 at the closing bell	The day’s largest single-name off-exchange mark, struck at the market

The set-up

The regime classifier still reads Sideways with the MPI at 55, and Friday fit the label: an index pair pulling in opposite directions, a vol gauge unwilling to endorse the red screen, and an options tape that paid up for dated insurance without hitting stock. What printed was protection — struck, dated, and sized around known events — while the off-exchange tape marked size at the market rather than through it. Monday’s open-interest update scores the NBIS block; the Accountability Ledger scores everything else.

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. Index closes above are Friday’s; the MPI snapshot is keyed to Thursday’s close, as the composite updates on a one-session lag.

This is research, not advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security.

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

Daily Pulse — Options Flow + Dark Pool, 23 July 2026

  MPI 60
  Regime Sideways
  SPY $738.18 -1.23%
  QQQ $691.96 -1.90%
  VIX 18.70
  SPY/QQQ/VIX as of 23 July 2026 close
  MPI as of 22 July 2026 close

23 July 2026 — EOD read. After two sessions of drift, the tape finally moved: both indices printed their widest down day in over a week, the VIX touched a 20 handle intraday, and the flow we watched all day was dominated by protection and volatility buying rather than single-name chasing.

Fast read

SPY fell 1.2% and QQQ 1.9%; the VIX tagged 20 intraday before closing at 18.70.
Put premium outran call premium by roughly $7B market-wide; index desks bought October structures.
SPY $735.21 — today’s low and the level to watch into Friday’s expiry.

What happened

SPY closed at $738.18, down 1.23% from yesterday’s $747.41, printing a low of $735.21 and finishing below the 50-day average sitting near $745. QQQ took the harder hit, closing at $691.96, down 1.90% from $705.35, with a session low of $687.79. The VIX opened at 17.64, spiked to 20.31 intraday, and settled at 18.70 — up just over two points on the day. NVDA gave back 1.56% to $208.76, though its options tape stayed call-tilted at a 0.55 put/call ratio with bullish and bearish premium nearly balanced.

Market-wide, 36.4M calls traded against 31.8M puts — a 0.87 put/call ratio by contract count. The dollars told a different story: $26.7B in put premium versus $19.4B in call premium. SPY’s own put/call ran 1.27 and QQQ’s 1.10, and QQQ’s 30-day IV rank jumped to roughly 79 from 65 the day before. Off-exchange, the block tape was heavy into the close: a $500M GOOG average-price print at $318.34, $246M in SPY, $171M in DIA, $142M in IGV (software), $108M in CRM, and roughly $195M of QQQ across two late prints. INTC crossed $57.6M off-exchange on 123M shares of consolidated volume — well above its 107M average.

Yesterday’s radar — OI confirm

Contract	Flagged	OI change overnight	Verdict
MU July 29 $1,040 calls	~$2.1M in prints	+601 on 774 volume (78%)	Confirmed opening
MU July 24 $970 calls	~$22.9M in prints	−484 (OI fell)	Not confirmed
TSLA July 24 $360 calls	~$5.9M in prints	+760 on 2,763 volume (28%)	Partially confirmed
TSLA Jun ’28 $380 calls	~$5.2M in prints	−113 (OI fell)	Not confirmed
GOOGL July 24 $345 puts	~$13.0M in prints	+10,947 on 14,147 volume (77%)	Confirmed opening
STX July 31 $950 calls	~$13.8M in prints	+1,975 on 2,166 volume (91%)	Confirmed opening
QQQ July 24 $715 puts	~$6.0M in prints	+1,623 on 5,929 volume (27%)	Partially confirmed
AVGO Sep $330 puts	~$1.3M in prints	+832 on 1,326 volume (63%)	Confirmed opening
MSFT Jan ’27 $390 puts	~$2.6M in prints	+172 on 687 volume (25%)	Partially confirmed
LITE Sep $900 calls	~$2.1M in prints	−32 (OI fell)	Not confirmed

The hedges and the chip-sector accumulation were real; the short-dated chase was not.

Why it matters

Today’s OI update sharpened the picture from yesterday’s tape. The money that stuck overnight was the patient kind — STX and MU calls further out on the calendar, AVGO September puts, deep GOOGL puts into Friday’s expiry — while the same-week lottery activity in MU, TSLA and LITE largely closed the same day it printed. That split, followed by today’s 1–2% index decline, reads as a tape that had already begun paying up for protection before the move arrived. Our read: the confirmed positioning was the dominant tell, and today it got paid.

What printed during today’s decline extends the same theme. The largest single-name structure on our scan was a 750-contract-per-leg SPX October $7,300 put / $7,600 call package — roughly $23.5M in combined premium bracketing the index from both sides. Alongside it: heavy Friday-expiry QQQ put volume at the $690 strike, an at-the-money August QQQ straddle bought on the ask, and a half-billion-dollar GOOG block crossing off-exchange. This is a tape paying for movement and insurance, not one pressing a single direction.

What to watch into Friday, July 24

SPY $735.21 — today’s low, and the level to watch. A close below would mark the first lower low of this pullback; $742.56, today’s high, is the reference on the other side.
SPY $745 — the 50-day average area price closed under today. A close back above would put the index back inside its prior range; continued closes below would mark a structural change from the June–July drift.
QQQ $687.79 / $690 — today’s low sits just under the strike where 88K Friday-expiry puts traded. How price settles against $690 at expiration determines whether that late put volume finishes in the money.
VIX 20 — printed intraday but didn’t hold into the close. A daily close above 20 would mark a shift in the volatility backdrop that today’s spike only hinted at.
Friday’s expiry itself — the confirmed GOOGL $345 puts and partially confirmed QQQ $715 puts both settle tomorrow; their expiration clears a large slug of near-dated protection off the board.
Earnings markers — FIX reported after today’s close; STX reports July 28 and MSFT July 29, both carrying confirmed positioning from this week’s tape.

Names on our radar

Ticker	What printed	Read
SPX	Oct 16 $7,300 puts + $7,600 calls, 750x each leg, ~$23.5M combined	A two-sided October bracket — premium paid for movement in either direction rather than a directional stance.
QQQ	July 24 $690 puts, 88K contracts vs 15.9K OI, bid-heavy, ~$3.5M	Friday-expiry activity right at the low; volume far over OI, unconfirmed as positioning until tomorrow’s OI update.
QQQ	Aug 21 $693 calls and puts, both ask-side, ~$4.4M combined	An at-the-money August straddle bought on the offer — a price paid for movement, consistent with the jump in QQQ’s IV rank.
MU	July 31 $950 puts, ~$2.0M sold at the bid in sweeps	Premium collected below spot a day after the $970 calls failed OI confirm — the tape in this name runs two-way.
GOOG/GOOGL	$500M dark-pool block at $318.34; Jan ’28 $300 puts ~$1.0M hit the bid	Heavy institutional turnover off-exchange while long-dated downside premium was collected under spot.
LMT	Sep $570 puts, ~$1.2M, mixed fills on earnings day	Positioning traded both ways around this morning’s report; the September tenor outlives the event.
NBIS	Sep $320 calls, ~$1.0M on the ask with stock near $219	Far out-of-the-money call buying roughly 46% above spot, ahead of the Aug 6 report.
FIX	Aug $1,780 calls, ~$1.0M ask-side hours before tonight’s report	Event positioning into the print — prior OI was 17 contracts, so nearly all of this is fresh exposure.

The set-up

The regime strip still says Sideways, and one 1–2% down day doesn’t change that on its own — but today’s session put real levels on the map for the first time in over a week. SPY closed under its 50-day average with its low at $735.21; QQQ’s decline came with an IV rank near 79 and a straddle bid; and the overnight OI update showed the patient hedges were the flow that stuck. What printed today — October brackets, Friday puts, a $500M block — describes a market paying to be covered either way into a heavy earnings stretch. Tomorrow’s expiry and OI update tell us which of today’s prints were real.

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 in the strip are frozen from the 22 July 2026 close, the most recent completed composite run; index prints are today’s close.

This is research, not advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security.

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