1. $SMH is put heavy today, P/C at 1.37, while everything else on the board is call city. The Aug 21 open interest is stacked at $530 puts (14,115 OI) and $595 puts (12,864 OI) with $600 calls (20,320 OI) bracketing spot around $562. Looks more like a collar or hedge structure than an outright bearish bet, but worth watching if semis get shaky.
2. $AMD's $470 call is pulling 15,730 contracts against just 63 OI, and the $467.5 call is doing similar, 12,827 vol on 8 OI. That's fresh money, not existing positions rolling. IV's sitting in the low to mid 30s, so if you're holding shares those strikes aren't a bad place to rent out some upside.
3. $NVDA volume is call heavy, P/C 0.55, but the skew tells a different story. The $215 put is pricing at 42% IV and the $217.5 put at 27%, both richer than the $220 call at 18%. Crowd's buying the calls but still paying up for downside insurance underneath, maybes on which side is right. If you're covered here, the $222.5 call at 29% IV is still juicy premium.
Aggregated and distilled by Two Sentence Traders. Not financial advice.