A sticker for the cryptocurrency bitcoin in a public restroom in Walnut Creek, California (Smith Collection/Getty Images)

EXh-IBIT A

Traders are going gaga over the newest way to speculate on bitcoin

Luke Kawa

11/20/24 10:23AM

The Trump pump isn’t the only catalyst for bitcoin bulls. A decisively pro-crypto US election outcome is being supercharged by the increased accessibility of leveraged ways to bet on bitcoin’s seemingly daily dash to fresh records continuing.

When options on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust launched on Tuesday, there was one-way traffic.

About 289,000 calls changed hands compared to roughly 65,000 puts. That’s a put/call ratio of 0.23, compared to 1.2 for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust.

This interest in leveraged exposure to bitcoin upside helped foster upside in bitcoin prices.

“Demand for call options almost certainly helped drive Bitcoin to a record high of about $94,000,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart.

in its launch day, $IBIT saw roughly 350k options traded. for comparison, BITO (launched 3 years ago) saw 145k. This product is going to be extremely interesting and tradeable. Here's the December options montage and vol by delta in Dec. There were a lot of blocks traded in Jan… pic.twitter.com/cWRhdZj3Zh
— Alpha_Ex_LLC (@Alpha_Ex_LLC) November 19, 2024

That being said, those headline stats for call volumes versus puts might overstate the extent of the bullish positioning. Looking at calls that expire in December with a strike price of $65 as well as the January $60 expiries — which were two of the four most actively traded contracts for this security — a lot of the transactions are taking place on the bid side.

As a reminder, the bid is the highest price a buyer will pay for a security; the ask is the lowest price a seller will accept. When there’s much more activity on the bid than the ask, that’s generally a signal that sellers of that instrument are more motivated than buyers.

Now look at the call options for both of those expiries with a strike price $5 lower, and you’ll see a lot of the activity was taking place on the ask, which implies there are buyers with strong enough demand to cross the spread.

Put those two dynamics together and it looks like there may have been quite a few call spread trades — that is, buying December $60 calls and selling $65s (or purchasing January $55 calls and selling $60s) in order to cheapen the trade and have a more defined risk-reward profile.

We’ll see if Wednesday’s launch of options on the likes of Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, and the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF shows a similar trend and provides a fresh outlet for the speculative fervor.

J. Edward Moreno3h

Hims’ COO to step into advisory role months after joining the company

Hims & Hers Chief Operating Officer Nader Kabbani — an Amazon veteran who joined the telehealth company in May — will leave his post next month, the company announced in a Thursday regulatory filing.

Kabbani will begin an advisory role with the company starting November 2 and Mike Chi, who is currently the company’s chief commercial officer, will assume Kabbani’s title and duties.

Kabbani, who helped launch Amazon Pharmacy at the robotics company Symbiotic, took over from Melissa Baird, the company’s longtime COO who transitioned to an advisory role earlier this year.

Kabbani joined Hims at a tumultuous time. The company saw explosive growth when it started selling copies of popular weight-loss drugs made by Novo Nordisk last year while they were in shortage. But now that those supply constraints have waned, it’s limited in how much it can continue selling. Meanwhile its core business has slowed down, which resulted in disappointing revenue numbers in its most recent quarterly report.

Tasha Matsumoto

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 post second consecutive all-time closing highs

This is the 30th closing high for the benchmark index in 2025.

CHICAGO, IL - JANUARY 14: Chicago Bulls mascot Benny the Bull during a game against the New Orleans Pelicans and the Chicago Bulls on January 14, 2025 at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Matt Phillips7h

AST SpaceMobile surges as satellite services theme gains market traction

Space stocks jumped on Thursday, led by a surge in AST SpaceMobile after Bell Canada named the Texas-based satellite services provider as a partner for a new direct-to-cellular service it plans to offer next year.

AST is up more than 20% just this week after announcing that its latest Bluebird 6 satellite was assembled, tested, and ready for launch and that its launch schedule appears to be on track.

“AST reiterated its expectation of launches every one to two months on average during 2025 and 2026, which is expected to result in between 45 and 60 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026,” wrote Louie DePalma, an analyst at William Blair. “Reaching 45 to 60 satellites in orbit is significant because it allows for continuous broadband coverage for AST’s core markets in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. We view this update positively.”

Space and satellite stocks Rocket Lab and Planet Labs ascended alongside AST Thursday. But all of these stocks are, in a sense, drafting off dynamics being driven by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the leader in the private space sector.

The company has played a key role in lowering the costs of space launches, thereby “fostering intense competition and accelerating innovation across the sector. This has led to significantly lower launch prices, reshaping the economics of deploying large-scale Low Earth Orbit constellations,” wrote Barclays analysts in a recent note on the outlook for the satellite industry. This has opened up new possibilities such as providing consumer broadband services, they noted.

Bell Canada to roll out direct-to-cell satellite service in 2026

“AST reiterated its expectation of launches every one to two months on average during 2025 and 2026, which is expected to result in between 45 and 60 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026,” wrote Louie DePalma, an analyst at William Blair. “Reaching 45 to 60 satellites in orbit is significant because it allows for continuous broadband coverage for AST’s core markets in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. We view this update positively.”

Luke Kawa8h

Bloom Energy falls as Mizuho downgrades the stock to “neutral” from “outperform”

There’s an immense need for power to fuel the AI data centers playing the starring role in driving up electricity prices.

Mizuho just isn’t sure that the high-flying fuel cell company Bloom Energy is well placed to provide it.

Analyst Maheep Mandloi cited the firm’s internal constraints on growth in lowering his rating on the stock to “neutral” from “outperform,” suggesting that Bloom will likely need to develop a bigger pipeline of customers before expanding its manufacturing footprint.

Still, he hiked his price target to $79 from $48 while downgrading the stock.

Last week, JPMorgan flagged that retail traders were beginning to sour on the shares, which had enjoyed a massive run-up that kicked into high gear thanks to a deal with Oracle announced in late July to supply power to data centers.

Wall Street is broadly negative on Bloom Energy, relative to most of the universe of the stocks the sell side covers. Its consensus rating, per analysts polled by Bloomberg, is just shy of 3.35. For reference, that’s a worse average rating than nearly 90% of the stocks in the S&P 500 (which Bloom is not a part of).

Jefferies downgraded the stock last week on the same day Bank of America analysts wrote, “We are still not buying into BE’s AI hype.” Nonetheless, most are still revising price targets higher to account for the stock’s move. But all that leaves the average price target well below where the shares are currently trading.

Matt Phillips8h

Western Digital, a top S&P stock over the last month, is attracting retail traders

We’ve been covering the sudden sexiness of data storage as a market theme a lot recently, with Western Digital and Seagate Technology Holdings turning into top trades of 2025.

The makers of relatively affordable data storage devices known as hard disk drives were leading the S&P 500 until recently, when they were supplanted by an index newbie.

WDC JPM Retail Radar Chart — A chart from JPM’s Retail Radar note showing increased retail buying of WDC.

But Western Digital, which has been trading at a discount to Seagate due to its spottier earnings record over the last couple years, seems to have suddenly found fans among the unwashed stock-trading masses, with JPMorgan’s always informative Retail Radar note spotlighting “strong buying in WDC rally” Wednesday as they climbed aboard a rally that has carried the shares up more than 60% over the last month.