Semiconductors are the clearest story this Monday. Micron tops the options leaderboard for bullish bets, up 240% year-to-date. SanDisk has gone even further — shares are up 591% YTD and call buyers still dominate. NVIDIA and AMD round out the top five for positive options flow. Bears are retreating from Analog Devices ahead of its Q3 print. That pattern — short covering into earnings — is consistent across the chip space right now.
Three major retailers report this week. Target and Lowe's hold earnings calls Tuesday morning. follows Wednesday after the close. Short interest is low across all three — under 4% of free float each. That positioning signals the market is not positioned for a miss. positioning remains cautious despite consensus targets barely moving, with analysts nudging the target slightly lower to $137.93.
The biggest short-side move of the week belongs to SpaceX. Short interest dropped 14.5 percentage points to 22% of free float. Harvard's $2.2 billion stake drove the bullish swing. On the opposite end, Replimune saw SI jump 10.4pp to 37.8% of FF. Wolfspeed remains the most crowded mid-cap short at 85.2% with zero shares to borrow.
Twilio saw the largest US insider sale in recent weeks. A board member filed a $123.5 million share sale on August 12. Charles Schwab's founder filed over $53 million in near-daily sales since late July. Healthcare insiders at Encompass Health and Tenet Healthcare also sold heavily this month.
ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
