Nothing Matters More Than Triple Witching
NVIDIA's post-earnings data on Wednesday was good, but it had little impact on the stock price. The real driver is the September 18 Triple Witching open interest settlement: the top Calls and top Puts will be max-pained, pinning the stock in the $200–210 range.
So it's hard to see a directional trend before Triple Witching. Take Pelosi buying the dip on INTC — before Triple Witching, INTC will struggle to break above 110, and it's also hard to break above 100. If you hold the underlying stock, consider selling the 100 call $INTC 20260918 100.0 CALL$ to just ride it out through early September.
It's worth noting that large block trades can have reverse effects. Earlier, someone sold a massive NVDA 190 Sell Put expiring September 4, which could cause the stock to break below 200. Based on past experience, there's a probability the stock will dip below 200 before expiration, forcing those Sell Put positions to close.
So selling the 200 Put on earnings is fine, but strikes below 200 are safer $NVDA 20260828 190.0 PUT$.
Similarly, for Hynix, a Covered Call at 200 works well $SKHY 20260918 200.0 CALL$ . It's clear that Q3 is mainly killing Calls — which means Q4 might see a sharp drop and rebound to kill Puts.
Who would have thought that TSLA would become the pillar of Sell Put strategies in August? The rebound is tracing the moving averages quite neatly — almost like compensation for shareholders hurt by the earnings drop. But it's hard to see the stock rebounding all the way back to 400. Until 370, you can sell puts close to the current price$TSLA 20260904 340.0 PUT$.
Gold has also entered a 400–430 consolidation range. Monday's bullish call block closed the September-expiry 420 Call and rolled to the 430 Call $GLD 20260918 430.0 CALL$ . While rolling to a higher strike suggests continued bullishness, the roll itself also represents partial profit-taking.
Additionally, the 420 Put opening $GLD 20260904 420.0 PUT$ suggests a pullback is likely in the near term.
Since Joe Tsai opened his position in Alibaba stock, bullish call block trades have been popping up like crazy over the past couple of days. This makes sense — if you've bought a lot of stock, you might as well sell Covered Calls to generate income. Monday saw the 160 Sell Call, and Tuesday saw openings at 140 and 145 $BABA 20261016 140.0 CALL$ $BABA 20261016 145.0 CALL$ .
I initially thought the 140 and 145 were Sell Calls, but after looking at the bid-ask spreads, it seems more like a bullish buy. That said, even if the direction is unclear, it doesn't really matter — because based on September open interest, Alibaba is likely to oscillate between 100 and 130. Even if you bought the 140 Call, the back-and-forth chop would be painful. So it's better to just sell the Put $BABA 20260904 110.0 PUT$.
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