Mystery Buyer Just Bet $20 Million SpaceX Could Nearly Triple by Friday. One Analyst Thinks It Could Be a Big Wall Street Bank
AJ Tiarsmith
Tue, August 4, 2026 at 8:39 PM GMT+5:30
4 min read
- SPCX
+9.43% - NVDA
+2.56%
Quick Read
A mystery buyer holds nearly $20 million in SPCX $330-strike calls expiring Friday, requiring the stock to nearly triple from $120
Kochuba rules out retail, hedge funds, and market-makers, pointing instead to a bank hedging short exposure in the stock or volatility
Pestrichelli says a $100 rally to $215 by Wednesday morning could make the position profitable, framing it as a cheap hedge rather than a speculative bet
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Open interest in a single out-of-the-money SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) call option is now approaching $20 million, and no one on Wall Street can say for certain who is behind it. The contract in question is the $330-strike call expiring this Friday, August 7, a strike that would require SPCX to nearly triple in four trading days from around $119.59. Brent Kochuba, founder of SpotGamma, thinks the fingerprints point to a big bank
The pattern is unusual. The contract has attracted more than 450,000 open positions, at least seven times the next most popular contract in the chain. On Monday alone, roughly 90,000 contracts were bought across hundreds of separate transactions, totaling about $2.2 million at an average of 30 cents per contract. The $20 million figure represents cumulative notional interest that has grown even as payoff odds have shrunk, rather than a single buyer’s outlay. Kochuba’s read of the flow rules out the obvious suspects: the buying does not look like retail, a hedge fund, or a market-maker.
That leaves something more institutional. “My guess is that banks own these calls as a hedge, maybe against some kind of structured product or some other short exposure they have,” Kochuba said. “It has to be some kind of margin hedge by someone short the stock or short vol or something like that.” The theory fits the shape of the flow: steady accumulation at a strike price no rational directional bettor would choose
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Crucially, this position does not need SPCX to reach $330 to profit. Jay Pestrichelli of Tidal Financial Group, which manages roughly $60 billion, argues the calls could turn profitable on a much smaller rally, around $215 by Wednesday morning, with the right mix of price movement and volatility expansion. “Making some assumptions on the math, a $100 rally by Wednesday morning could be profitable,” Pestrichelli said. “It’s not a speculative moon shot, you don’t buy the highest strike in the chain unless you’re trying to reduce the cost of a hedge.”
