Options Bets Pile Up Around Chips and Kenvue's $1.8B Exit

Options sentiment turned sharply positive in tech this week. Centene topped ORTEX's seven-day options score table, but the most telling flows sit elsewhere.

RingCentral jumped 15% in premarket trade on Friday. The software stock is up 185% year-to-date. A short score of 47 and a short interest RSI below 62 means there is still a meaningful bearish base to squeeze. Call activity around a name moving that fast tends to snowball quickly.

Chips are the other focal point. Western Digital has gained 120% this year and analysts still see 73% upside. NVIDIA sits at a $5.2 trillion market cap with a 48% analyst return potential. Taiwan's total export orders hit a record $114.2bn in September, the highest since 1984, according to ORTEX Alt Data. Export orders by product group reached $95.7bn, up from $55.1bn in September 2025. That macro backdrop feeds directly into semiconductor demand.

On the bearish side, Lucid Group carries a short score of 85 and 14.3 days to cover. Its options score sits at the bottom of the US universe. The EV maker is down 70% year-to-date.

The biggest forced-selling event in the options calendar is Kenvue. ORTEX Index Rebalance Radar puts an 93% probability on its S&P 500 removal following the Kimberly-Clark deal. That triggers $1.5bn of forced index selling alone, with a total of $1.8bn across all its index changes. The announcement is expected around 20 November, effective 30 October. Traders positioning for that exit are likely already active in put markets.