Unusual Options Activity Flares in META and SMCI Stock: What to Watch Next

Decisively bearish, or simply panicked activity, to finish the trading week wasn’t simply left to stock trading on S&P 500 Index ($SPX) companies.
Larger institutions were equally forceful in securing protection and wagering with bearish conviction based on Barchart’s scanning and Options Flow features.
The S&P 500 broke and finished just beneath its 200-day simple moving average. It’s the first technical breach of this well-watched indicator since March 2025 when Wall Street was panicking over tariffs and trade wars.
Today, Iran and surging oil prices have taken center stage.
Also, the CBOE Volatility Index ($VIX) rallied 25% from Wednesday’s low of 21.47% to finish at 26.78%. The sharp rise in this gauge of investor behavior is just more than 10% from the market’s historically elevated 30% level.
And amidst these worrying stats and bearish-looking technicals, Meta Platforms (META) and Super Micro Computer (SMCI) had a bit more fuel adding to their fiery and unusually active options activity.
META Stock’s Deep ITM Put Activity
Diversified tech giant Meta Platforms is the first stock whose unusual options activity grabbed my attention.
Following Thursday’s session, a simple Barchart stock scanner that incorporates options trading statistics revealed META as one with which bears appeared to have an axe to grind.
Activity in Meta’s calls and puts came in slightly more than double their 3-month average as volume swelled to 1.025 million contracts.
At the same time, investors were unusually fixated in the tech stock’s puts as indicated by a put-to-call (P/C) ratio of 2.46.
Behind the puts outpacing calls by a margin of nearly 2.5 to 1.0, META hinted at layoffs upwards of 20% as the company looks to counter heavy AI spend.
Shares finished down 1.46% following Thursday’s news.
Could the longer-term price action in META stock may have had something to do with the put positioning as well?
Unlike the broader S&P 500, shares have experienced a much deeper correction since last summer. META stock has declined as much as 26% from its highs.
And in December, the stock signaled a threatening Death Cross pattern as the 50-day SMA crossed below the 200-day SMA.
Yet, a more detailed investigation using Barchart’s Options Flow page on Meta stock found significant put activity with a very short leash on it.
The monthly March contract with just one day remaining was behind the unusual options volume.
Amongst the deep pocketed activity, the Options Flow page reveals transactions valued upwards of $243 million and $146 million on block prints 57K and 30K contracts.
The unusual options trading is clearly the earmarks of an institution.
We can also conclude the put activity was “opening” given the much smaller existing open interest.
But don’t be led into thinking this larger investor profited from Friday’s META stock decline by purchasing the puts.
Also, don’t believe for a second this same entity has longer-term ambitions shorting the stock after the contract is exercised. Or that they’ve already pocketed the profits for a quick and exceptionally good overnighter.
At the end of the day, both are possible. But it’s unlikely.
More probable, an institution that is long META stock could have been using long puts to exit a long stock position with little to no extrinsic or time premium cost given the deep and short life span of those contracts.
Similarly, but on the opposite side of the coin, this institutional investor may have been selling the puts to start or add to, upon assignment, an existing long share position in Meta shares.
The fact is this type of trade happens all the time. And in doing so, the trader can create a large, synthetic long position with less market impact — even in the face of threatening layoffs or the Death Cross pattern!
Super Micro Computer’s Protection Bid
Our second S&P 500 stock may not be a constituent of much longer if it keeps going at this rate.
Shares were off 33% Friday after reports of a trio of insiders were caught in a $2.5 billion trafficking scheme involving banned Nvidia (NVDA) AI server chips to China.
It’s not SMCI’s first time in the spotlight for bad behavior.
The prior couple years also included a mishmash of accounting irregularities, an auditor resignation, delayed filings, and a SEC investigation.
The implosion in the SMCI stock price was enough to make it the most prized options with investors by daily change in implied volatility.
Net buyers of protective long premium drove implieds up 44% to nearly 110% on a very even split of calls and puts as evidenced by a Put/Call reading of 0.99.
Barchart’s screener also confirms Super Micro’s calls and puts as Friday’s largest percent change in daily trading activity for S&P 500 stocks. More than 1.3 million contracts changed hands, 482% above its 3-month average.
The Options Flow page indicates that while the absolute call and put volume was evenly matched, the real heavyweight action favored investors buying puts.
After sorting for the premium statistic and largest dollar-priced trades, we can see deeper in-the-money and longer-dated puts were dominated by “green” buyers taking offers.
One December $30 put transaction for $13.30 also looks like a bearish buyer or an investor seeking protection, based on the time of the transaction and the puts closing quote.
To be fair, there were sellers in the mix who were willing to be similarly aggressive in hitting bids. But those two highlighted transactions were outflanked by our assessed put buyers.
Those puts also traded on the out-of-the-money $15 and $10 strikes.
Sure, premium sellers have a reputation for being a savvy group. But part of that idolization is myth. More importantly, given SMCI’s reputational damage, two wrongs don’t make a right.
The bottom line is that if a cash-secured put strategy is behind the action, those fewer trades have the appearance of being more difficult or entirely regrettable ways to collect income into late 2027 and early 2028.
On the date of publication, Chris Tyler did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com