SK Hynix option trading started. But another stock group is stealing its thunder

SK Hynix The options debuted on Tuesday to less fanfare than expected, given the stock’s annual rise and more than 20% gain on Tuesday alone.

About 150,000 options were traded on SK through midday Tuesday, with more calls than puts, but the most popular directional trade by volume was selling calls, according to Cboe LiveVol data. Cboe offered five expiration dates. Five of the monthly options expire on the third Friday of July, August, September, December and March 2027.

Although volume was higher than 110,000 contracts. VanEck Semiconductor Fund (SMH)the volume will almost double sandisk or marvelless than one-third of the volume of Round Hill Memory ETF (DRAM)or micronabout 380,000 contracts were traded on Tuesday. Nvidia Approximately $2.3 million has been traded at the time of writing.

One reason for the lack of notable call buying is that the proliferation of individual stock ETFs and leveraged funds with exposure to the Korean chip sensation stole much of the speculative spotlight in the run-up to SK Hynix’s U.S. listing and subsequent options.

More than a dozen ETF issuers have applied for SK-related leveraged single-stock funds, and many began trading on Tuesday. Also, due to the great success of the DRAM ETF, assets now reach $23 billion, of which SK Hynix is ​​the third largest holding.

“These ETFs may have been weeded out because there’s a lot of double-long, double-short demand, but once they’re in the weekly publication, you’ll see more volume,” said Scott Bauer, CEO of Chicago-based Prosper Trading Academy.

The two biggest trades of the session appeared to be a single trader who sold more than 2,200 of the 180-strike calls expiring on July 17th, nearly at-the-money contracts that yielded $9 apiece for roughly $2 million in sales.

According to LiveVol, the top seven single trades by volume were all bearish.