Unusual Flow 7/6

Midday Update

Back from the long weekend and the money wasted no time picking a side.

Nasdaq is up over 1% as I write this, S&P grinding +0.7%, Dow flat after printing a record close Thursday at 52,900. Quick rewind for anyone who spent the weekend at the lake instead of the terminal: the holiday-shortened week ended mixed. The Dow ripped to all-time highs, the S&P went nowhere, and the Nasdaq bled as semis got hit with two straight days of profit taking. MU dropped 5.5% Thursday, INTC 5.3%, AMD 4.3%. Nothing broke. Valuations got heavy after semis ran 80%+ in the first half and somebody rang the register. That’s it. That’s the whole story of last week.

The macro backdrop didn’t change either. June jobs came in soft, claims printed 215K under estimates, and the market read it the way it always does now: soft enough to keep the Fed parked, strong enough to keep earnings estimates alive. Wall Street is looking for 26% earnings growth this year. Q2 reports start flowing in two weeks. That’s the setup, and it’s a good one.

So the question coming into today was simple. Was Thursday the start of something or was it a flush? Today answered. The two-day chip washout is getting bought back at the ask. Nvidia came out and said the roadmap is intact after that server delay report rattled Asia over the weekend. Foxconn posted stronger than expected quarterly sales, which is direct confirmation AI hardware demand hasn’t blinked. SK Hynix is listing a $29 billion ADR on the Nasdaq today, one of the largest offerings ever, and Samsung reports tomorrow with estimates calling for a profit number that embarrasses their entire 2025. The memory complex is the center of gravity this week, and capital knows it.

And the flow agrees. Loudly. Today’s sheet is one of the heaviest call-side prints we’ve logged in weeks: 31 lines in Calls Bought against 5 in Puts Sold, with the Puts Bought column mostly reading like hedges and pairs rather than outright bear bets. Let’s walk it.