r/TheDesperateTrader

ASML trade card · OptionWhales daily thesis

ASML's 52-week high is $1,999.96, close enough to a round number that most of what gets written about the stock now is some version of whether it covers the last few percent. On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, with the ADR at $1,847.24, a trader sold 100 of the October 9 $1,980 calls and bought 100 of the October 9 $1,985 calls in one burst at 09:56:04 ET, taking in $2,100 net. That is a single five-dollar-wide call spread with three sessions to live, and it is direction-neutral: net delta across the two legs comes to about negative 83 shares of ASML, which is nothing. The per-leg side tagging came back weak on both, so I hold the sign of that credit loosely, though the package printed as cash received.

The name has been giving that strike reasons to look reachable. Yahoo Finance reported on October 2 that ASML rose about 3.5% intraday as Samsung pulled High-NA EUV toward DRAM, with the close at $1,867.31, and that was the stock's whole session rather than anything to do with this order (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/asml-stocks-surge-3-5-194703151.html). Q3 results come Wednesday, October 14, before the open, per ASML's investor page (https://investor.asml.com/quarterly-results), five days after these contracts stop existing.

The strikes sit 7.2% and 7.5% above the $1,847.24 spot at the print, deltas of 5.4 and 4.5, implied vol 44.9% on the short leg against 44.3% on the long. The five dollars between them caps what the structure can lose at $47,900 against the $2,100 collected. The credit is 4.2% of the width, almost exactly what the 1985 call's own 4.5 delta says about finishing through both strikes, so there is no obvious pickup in the geometry itself. Prior-day open interest was 143 contracts at 1980 and 119 at 1985, so 100 lots a side is a large fraction of what was already sitting there, which leans opening without settling it: whether this adds exposure or retires something already on the book is not established.

For a package like this to make sense, 44.9% implied on a five-delta wing three days out has to be rich, and the reason it might be is on the calendar. The October 9 weekly contains no scheduled ASML event, while the quarter prints the Wednesday after, and earnings vol leaks backwards into front weeklies. The credit here is coming out of the strike the $2,000 conversation has made busy, in a window where the stock would have to cover 7.2% on drift and sector tape alone. The competing reading is that $2,100 gross on a structure priced at its own model value is thin for an income trade, and fits better as three days of cap on a long that already exists, or one component of a book I cannot see. I find that second one more convincing, because the geometry gives up nothing and a 27-basis-point strip of share price is an odd thing to own on its own.

Where it leaves me: this position cares about one thing, where ASML closes Friday against a five-dollar band sitting 1% under the 52-week high. If the stock stays near where it printed Tuesday morning, three sessions is a short clock for 7.2%, and what breaks that is an unscheduled move, since the Samsung news lifted the whole name roughly 3.2% in a day and you would need about two of those back to back. ASML reported $7.92 EPS last quarter against $8.68 expected, per TipRanks (https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/asml/earnings), and this structure is settled and gone before anyone learns whether that repeats. The live question for next week is whether the same wing gets sold in the expiry that actually covers October 14.

*Education, not advice. Flow data from optionwhales.io.*

CRWV trade card · OptionWhales daily thesis

Wall Street still carries CoreWeave at a consensus Buy, 35 analysts averaging a price target near $138.78 per MarketBeat, while the stock changed hands at $88.33 on Thursday, October 1, 2026, barely half its 52-week high of $153.20. A trader leaned the other way at 13:50:59 ET, paying a net $2.3M for a 5,000-contract CRWV put spread expiring January 15, 2027: long the 90s, short the 70s, one print. The structure is bearish. Both legs were marked at nearly identical implied vol, so the vega offsets and what the debit buys is direction.

The bear case here got a name ten days ago. Rothschild Redburn initiated CoreWeave at Sell on September 21, 2026, arguing that falling GPU-rental prices, hyperscalers building their own capacity and expensive financing would compress returns (Yahoo Finance, September 23: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/coreweave-nebius-just-got-sell-185913300.html). Invezz on September 29 had the stock in a bear market with short interest above 10%, a figure about the shares generally and not about this order. Under that argument sit $2.58B of Q2 revenue against a $626M net loss, roughly $33.8B of total debt as of June 30, capex guided to $35B-$39B for 2026, and a $104B backlog. The day's actual headline pointed elsewhere: Zacks, October 1, on the new CoreWeave Partner Network and the NVIDIA Vera CPU deployments unveiled at Fully Connected the day before, a story about ecosystem reach, which is a separate question from what a GPU-hour rents for.

The two legs:
- bought 2,500 of the Jan 15, 2027 90 puts for $3.6M, $14.40 a share, delta -0.43, IV 74.7%
- sold 2,500 of the Jan 15, 2027 70 puts for $1.3M, $5.20 a share, delta -0.21, IV 75.0%

Net $9.20 a share for a $20-wide window, 106 days out, with the long strike $1.67 above spot and the short strike about 21% below it. Net delta works out near -0.22 per spread. Prior-day open interest was 6,791 at the 90s and 33,188 at the 70s, both far larger than the 2,500 traded in each leg, so either side could have been opened or closed inside that interest and open versus close is not determinable here.

What interests me is where they stopped. Selling the 70s caps the structure above the 52-week low of $60.55, which means the thing being bought sits in the band between today's price and the bottom of the existing range, and the tail underneath it was sold off to pay for the near part. Anyone pricing the financing accident implied by $33.8B of debt and compressing rental economics would want to own that tail, and this structure sells it. Paying 46% of the width for a window anchored at the money, at 75 vol, is a workable way to own a move into the 70s and a poor way to own anything under them. A second reading stays live: with short interest where it is and the equity sitting on top of that debt load, this could be financed protection on exposure I cannot see. The strike placement persuades me more than the hedge reading does, because a hedger with that much balance-sheet risk in mind usually reaches further down, not to a strike already in the money.

CoreWeave's next earnings report is estimated for November 9, 2026, inside the contract's life, and the expanded $21B Meta agreement announced April 9, 2026 covers capacity running 2027 through 2032, so this spread expires two weeks into the first year of that contract. If GPU-hour pricing keeps slipping while interest expense compounds, the 90-70 band is exactly where this position lives. What breaks it is utilization and contract pricing holding up, and November is the first dated read on which of those is happening.

*Education, not advice. Flow data from optionwhales.io.*