Meta Platform’s AI efforts are looking like the recipe for a comeback after an almost year-long drought in shares of the $1.7 trillion market-cap company.
Shares of Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant jumped more than 6% Friday to the highest level since April, extending gains that began earlier this month when the company detailed plans to sell access to its AI computing capacity. On Thursday, the company launched Muse Spark 1.1, an AI coding product that will compete with Anthropic and OpenAI. Shares of Meta are flat on the year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 is up 18%.
Options traders piled in on Friday, with volume on pace for more than three times the 30-day average and 78% of the stock’s $1.8 billion in options premium tied to calls, according to data from Cboe LiveVol and SpotGamma. Some of the call-buying was likely offset with selling as well, with as many calls sold as bought, but more than twice as many calls were bought compared to puts, and eight of the top 10 contracts by volume were calls as of midday.
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The five most popular trades were all contracts expiring Friday afternoon, looking for a quick extension of early gains. The top trade, the $675 strike call expiring Friday, trades for about $3 per contract and needs Meta to add on another 2% by the bell.
The most actively traded contract expiring after Friday is the July 17 700-strike, a trade that needs a 6% advance to break even.
While bulls dominated the action in the short-term trades, at least one big trader faded the notion of a big swing in either direction. The second-biggest trade of the session was someone selling a total $29 million of both puts and calls at the 670 strike, a bet the stock will stay right where it is for the next two months.
