Options bears have been targeting TSLA since the stock's post-earnings selloff
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) was early to the broad market tech correction, gapping 12.4% lower on July 24 after a dismal earnings report. The shares have shed 25% since their July 11 annual peak of $271, and were last seen testing the psychologically significant $200 level. Now down 19% in 2024, put options are almost as popular as calls in the last two weeks.
TSLA is near the top of Senior Quantitative Analyst Rocky White's list of tickers that attracted the most options volume during the last two weeks. Over that period, the equity saw 10,130,053 calls and 9,198,264 puts traded, the closest one-to-one ratio between calls and puts of any name on the list.
Digging deeper, the weekly 8/9 150-strike puts are a popular contract, as are the August 200 puts, with sell-to-open activity detected at the former. Even with earnings in the rearview, the options market is pricing in extremely elevated volatility expectations for TSLA options. The equity's 30-day at-the-money implied volatility sits in the 95th percentile of its annual range today.