Twilio is the story of the morning. Shares surged more than 20% in premarket trade after strong earnings results. Options traders had already positioned for the move — positive bets made up 71.8% of total flow over the past week. The beat looks prescient.
Semiconductors remain in focus too. NVIDIA led all US stocks in bullish options flow this week. Intel is up 157% year-to-date. This morning, news broke that CEO Lip-Bu Tan has taken a new role at an NVIDIA-backed quantum computing firm. Analysts are calling Apple a "golden era" story, with Dan Ives and Gene Munster both positive on the name.
Storage analysts lifted targets on Western Digital and Sandisk Thursday. Western Digital's average target rose to $391 from $372.
Xiao-I Corporation is a live short squeeze candidate. The stock is up 880% in one month. Short interest nearly doubled to 38.3% of float. Utilization sits at 91% after hitting 100%. The cost to borrow climbed to 63.4%.
Meanwhile, Wolfspeed remains the most crowded large-cap short. SI hit 50.6% of free float. Available shares to borrow have collapsed to just 1.6% of short interest.
The calendar heats up next week. Electronic Arts reports Tuesday. Marriott International follows Wednesday. Gilead Sciences and Cencora also report. It is a busy stretch for the consumer and healthcare sectors.
One notable buy cluster: Charter Communications CEO and two directors filed purchases totalling nearly $1.8M on April 28. That kind of cluster buying stands out in a week when most C-suite filings were sales.
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.
