Meta Surges Another 6% on Friday as Bullish Options Sentiment Heats Up
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Meta surged over 6% Friday to its highest since April, extending weekly gains to ~15%; 78% of options premium went to calls, but a $29 million straddle sell signals disagreement on what comes next.
What drove this rally?
Two catalysts: Meta disclosed a plan to sell access to its AI compute this month, then launched Muse Spark 1.1 — an AI coding product — on Thursday, taking aim at Anthropic and OpenAI.
Friday's 6%+ jump lifted the stock to its highest since April; the weekly gain of roughly 15% is Meta's best since early 2024.
Yet Meta is roughly flat year-to-date, well behind the Nasdaq 100's ~18% gain over the same period. This means → the move looks more like a catch-up trade than trend leadership.
What is the options market betting on?
Friday's options volume ran more than 3× the 30-day average. 78% of options premium — roughly $1.8 billion — went to calls, per CBOE LiveVol and SpotGamma data.
Call volume was more than double put volume; eight of the ten most-traded contracts were calls.
In plain terms = the overwhelming majority of bets were on further upside, and they were urgent — the five most active contracts all expired that same day, a pure "it rallies today or the bet is worthless" wager.
How much further does Meta need to rise for the top contracts to pay off?
Highest volume: a same-day-expiry $675 strike call, priced at ~$3 per contract — Meta needed to climb roughly 2% more before the close to break even.
Most active beyond this week: a July 17 expiry $700 strike call, requiring a further ~6% move to reach break-even.
This means → short-term money is betting on momentum carrying higher, while medium-term money is wagering Meta can clear the $700 mark.
Who is betting the other way?
The second-most-traded contract was a $670 strike straddle sell — simultaneously selling a call and a put at the same strike — with roughly $29 million in combined notional between buyers and sellers.
In plain terms = this trade bets Meta will neither surge nor plunge over the next two months, hovering near current levels.
This reflects a market that is not uniformly bullish — whether earnings season can validate the commercial return on AI compute spending will be the key test for this rally's staying power.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.