Markets
markets
Luke Kawa

Bets on stock market volatility going up, down, or sideways are through the roof

Options tied to the VIX Index, a measure of the expected 30-day volatility for the S&P 500, are soaring as the benchmark US stock index sinks, erasing its gains since the November election. As of noon ET, more of these derivatives have already changed hands than any day since September 5.

I love writing about options because they have all the ingredients you need to write a compelling markets story: there’s either an element of fear, greed, or complacency coupled with a bet that something will or won’t happen by a certain point in time.

Options tied to the VIX Index, which is commonly known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” are effectively the above on steroids — in many cases, you’re writing about fear squared.

But today, it would be impossible to write just one story about activity in VIX options, because there’s just so much going on here. There are some wagers like the ones we saw last Thursday that call for volatility to reach historically rare extremes. There are also people betting on the opposite, either by selling out-of-the-money VIX calls or buying VIX puts, predicting that this market tumult will subside.

One thing’s for sure: volatility is expected to be volatile. There are so many bets in so many different directions that the VVIX Index (effectively VIX squared or VIX inception, a measure of how volatile the VIX is expected to be based on VIX options) has jumped to its highest levels of the year.

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Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa
22h
Markets end the week in the red as Broadcom and Oracle concerns drag the entire AI trade down

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 were all negative on Friday.

The lunchbox
markets
Matt Phillips

Data center trade deep in the red

The data center trade is seeing its steepest sell-off since the market rout that was ignited by President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden tariff announcement back in April.

Goldman Sachs’ themed basket of AI data center shares was down more than 6% at around 12 p.m. ET, putting it on track for its worst day since the tariff announcement.

Losses hammered seemingly every form of input needed for the sprawling concrete server warehouses at the heart of the investment boom.

Hardware makers including data storage companies like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings, as well as DRAM maker Micron — some of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year — were taking a licking, as were networking stocks Cisco and Arista Networks and data center builders such as Vertiv Holdings and electrical and mechanical contractor Emcor.

Optimism for all things AI has seemed to evaporate throughout the week, as the stock market greeted lackluster quarterly numbers from Oracle and Broadcom with jittery sell-offs and concern about growing debts that could crater cash flows.

Those worries seem to be spreading to ancillary beneficiaries of the AI boom on Friday, gouging a chunk out of charts that retail dip buyers have not — at least so far — stepped in to buy as we head into the weekend.

markets
Luke Kawa

Oracle denies Bloomberg report that it’s delaying some data centers for OpenAI to 2028 from 2027

Getting a multi-hundred-billion-dollar backlog for cloud computing revenues from data center projects is easy. Building them is hard.

Oracle extended declines to as much as -6.5% on the day on the heels of a Bloomberg report that the cloud giant has pushed back the completion dates for some of the data centers it’s building for OpenAI to 2028 from 2027, citing people familiar with the work. Oracle denied this report, telling Reuters that there have been no delays to any sites required to meet its contractual commitments and that all milestones remain on track.

Shares had fully pared their report-induced drop ahead of Oracle’s reply, but remain in the red for the day.

Bloomberg said the reported postponement was attributed to labor and material shortages.

Oracle has been spending more on capex than Wall Street had anticipated, leading to higher-than-expected cash burn. Management boosted its full-year capital spending plans by $15 billion after reporting Q2 results earlier this week.

Oracle’s cloud infrastructure sales came in short of estimates in its fiscal 2026 Q2, a signal that markets already had reason to doubt its ability to quickly turn its humungous RPO (that is, remaining purchase obligations) into revenues.

Traders also seem to be of the mind that potential delays to data center completions are going to limit sales for what goes into them.

Some of the bigger losers since the Bloomberg headline hit the wires include:

markets
Luke Kawa

Broadcom’s post-earnings tumble is weighing on Google’s entire AI ecosystem

Broadcom’s post-earnings plunge is prompting a sharp pullback in Google-linked AI stocks, which had been on fire thanks to the warm reception to Gemini 3.

The stocks getting hit hard:

A basket of these Google-linked AI stocks compiled by Morgan Stanley is suffering one of its worst losses of the year. This brisk retreat also follows the release of GPT-5.2 by OpenAI.

markets
Matt Phillips

Citi initiates coverage of Planet Labs with “buy” rating

Planet Labs was up after aerospace and defense analysts at Citi initiated coverage with a “buy/high risk” rating and $19 price target.

The stock is up more than 40% this week, after a strong earnings result that spotlighted the company’s growing opportunity in linking its core business of capturing daily images of the planet with AI technologies.

Citi analysts noted the potential for a positive flywheel effect for Planet Labs as it deepens its focus on integrating AI into its offerings:

“AI is accelerating the conversion of pixels to decisions, where Planet’s daily scan and deep archive offer a uniquely large training corpus and broad-area foundation for automation. AI-enabled solutions (MDA/GMS/AMS) are gaining traction with customers such as NATO and the U.S. DoW, validating the approach of integrating AI into broad-area monitoring products... These AI moves create a compounding advantage: more coverage generates more training data, which improves models, which in turn increases product utility and addressable demand.”

The stock has also caught the attention of some of the retail trading crowd, with call options activity spiking on Thursday as traders rode the market reaction to the results.

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