🍕 Hey, hot stuffed

Domino’s was slightly down after missing earnings expectations in its first stuffed-crust quarter, but the data is in and the chain’s attempt to cover all of its crusty bases has borne out. It turns out the only things that the American people like more than oiled and salted bread is oiled and salted bread that has been assiduously filled with cheese. 

• The company reported domestic same-store sales growth of 3.4%, more than the 2% analysts were penciling in. Overall, revenue rose to $1.15 billion, in line with analyst expectations.

• This comes after the company added stuffed crust to its menu in March. Domino’s CEO Russell Weiner touted in a statement that the company now offers “all the major crust types.”

• Weiner told analysts on an earnings call that “customer praise for this product has been significantly higher than any of our recent product launches.” 

Stuffed crust is single-handedly having a major boost to how much people are dropping at Domino’s: the average purchase increased 1.4% from the addition of stuffed crust, which is an upcharge.

The Takeaway

Domino’s has some challenges — a $27.4 million loss in its Chinese subsidiary, DPC Dash, and a $12.1 million increase in tax expenses are two reasons they missed earnings — but at the end of the day, it’s remarkably difficult to lose money selling Americans pizza. 

Read more.

Shares of Opendoor Technologies soared nearly 120% at its peak before being halted for volatility to the downside, finishing up 43%, as enthusiasm over the potential turnaround story — and the desire to chase momentum in a stock that mooned last week — continue to produce massive flows into the name. 

Daily volumes and the total value of money spent trading the stock each hit a record before the session was two hours old. 

• Call volumes breached 1 million for the first time ever, setting a daily record for the fifth consecutive session.

• Call options volumes were accelerating and migrating up the chain, with increasing demand for the options that are out of the money but getting closer to being money-good.

• For instance, the most active contract yesterday was the call option with a strike price of $4.50 that expires this Friday. This contract had no open interest prior to Monday. All of these were new bets, with the rush into these wagers with embedded leverage putting upward pressure on the shares.

What’s fueling this? Well, the gamma squeeze is back. 

The sequence goes a little something like this: traders buy a ton of call options, and they have to buy them from someone (market makers and/or dealers). These players don’t want to make money by taking the other side of this bet, though. They want to make money through extracting value from every little bit of buying and selling activity that occurs. 

So when a market maker sells a call — which would leave them exposed to losses if shares of the underlying company rally a ton — they will simultaneously offset that risk by buying a given amount of shares of that company.

The Takeaway

When lots of traders are buying options, they are effectively forcing a lot of buying of the underlying stock at the same time! This buying can put upward pressure on the share price, which forces even more buying from these entities that have no view whatsoever on the stock, but are merely trying to cover their butts.

Go deeper on gamma.

The long, slow death of the late-night talk show

The shifting sands of entertainment just swallowed one of America’s most successful shows, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and with it, sounded the alarm on an iconic entertainment format. Despite leading the competitive 11:35 p.m. ET late-night slot for almost a decade, the show has lost a third of its viewers. What Jimmy Fallon’s done to the audience of “The Tonight Show,” though, is far more dramatic, as this chart shows.

The losses behind the “financial decision”

Which website saw traffic explode 15,000% after a viral TikTok clip?

Answer here.

• Block soared on Friday’s news that the fintech giant would be replacing Hess in the S&P 500

• Verizon rose 4% on strong second-quarter earnings and improved guidance for the full year

• Sarepta Therapeutics slipped after the drugmaker said it would continue selling its gene treatment despite a request from the Food and Drug Administration to pull the therapy from the market

• Is there any job you wouldn’t leave for $1 billion? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apparently found out one OpenAI exec can’t be bought

• JPMorgan warns that high-beta trades are seeing extreme levels of “crowding”

• Budget airline Ryanair pays staffers a bounty to catch oversized bags. It’s thinking about boosting the payout 

• Uber’s focus on robotaxis might also accelerate its stalling electrification efforts 

• The parent company of Truth Social, Trump Media, now holds $2 billion in bitcoin