Sentiment check
The after-math.
On Tuesday, more S&P call options were purchased in a single session than ever before. Quoth the Raven described the sophistication:
“…outright gamblers exploiting market structure.”
This, as the professor of market structure - Capital Flows - is raising cash and turning a bit more short-term conservative following a relentlessly bullish July arc, where he maintained ORCL as one of the most asymmetric setups in the market, AI compute as the next asset class absorbing flows, and PURR/HYPE, ES pointing “toward an all time high”.
Across all writers though, bearish sentiment is now coming down. Here’s the full data (30 Jul – 5 Aug vs 23–29 Jul) with the tape excluded, counted by distinct authors.
Bearish sentiment dropped 5.9pt week over week.
The mechanism is bulls arriving, not bears leaving. Bearish calls fell only 10% (347 → 313), while bullish calls jumped 29% (1,116 → 1,442). Volume expanded and almost all the new volume was long. Closes were flat at 99 → 100, so nobody was rushing for exits. In terms of author breadth, the share of active authors making at least one bearish call went 42.0% → 37.4%.
Disclosed longs jumped 71% while short volume froze.
Apple and Meta absorbed the bear flow.
Apple coverage quadrupled (11 authors → 44) and shifted into net bearish. Meta is the same shape one notch down: coverage tripled, bear share doubled, however it’s still net bullish (<50%). CoreWeave and Nebius bears grew faster than the audience: bearish contingent went 1→6 and 1→5 while staying net long as coverage grew 2.8x and 1.6x.
Newly bearish tickers on the week:
The QCOM cluster is Apple-driven — LongYield and Irrational Analysis are both writing about Apple pulling its modem business in-house, so it’s really one story.
USDJPY — 4 authors
