SK Hynix options begin trading. But another group of stocks is stealing its thunder

SK Hynix options debuted Tuesday to less fanfare than one might have expected given the year-long rally in the stock and a 20%-plus surge on Tuesday alone.

About 150,000 options traded in SK by midday Tuesday and while more calls traded than puts, the most popular directional trade by volume was selling calls, according to Cboe LiveVol data. Cboe offered five expiries: five monthly options that expire the third Friday of July, August, September, December and March 2027.

While volume was higher than the 110,000 contracts traded on the VanEck Semiconductor fund (SMH), and almost double the volume in Sandisk or Marvell, it’s less than a third of the volume in the Roundhill memory ETF (DRAM), or Micron, which traded about 380,000 contracts Tuesday. Nvidia traded about 2.3 million as of writing.

One explanation for the lack of notable call-buying is that the surge in single-stock ETFs and leveraged funds with exposure to the South Korean chip sensation stole a big chunk of the speculative limelight in the run-up to SK Hynix’s U.S. listing and subsequent options.

Almost a dozen ETF issuers filed for leveraged single-stock funds tied to SK, many of which began trading on Tuesday. There’s also the huge success of the DRAM ETF, now with $23 billion in assets, of which SK Hynix is the third-biggest holding.

“Those ETFs – double long, double short – that’s a lot of demand that maybe got taken away but I’m sure we’ll see a pickup in volume when they list the weeklies,” said Scott Bauer, CEO of Chicago-based Prosper Trading Academy.

The two biggest trades in the session looked like a single trader who sold more than 2,200 of the 180-strike calls expiring July 17, nearly at-the-money contracts that brought in $9 a piece for a roughly $2 million sale.

The top seven single trades by volume were all bearish, according to LiveVol.