Open interest in a single out-of-the-money SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) 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.
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.”
The backdrop explains the appetite for protection. SPCX priced at $135 on June 11, 2026, raising roughly $75 billion at a valuation near $1.8 trillion, the largest IPO in history. It then surged more than 67% to an intraday high near $225.64 before collapsing. The stock is now down roughly 15% to 20% from its IPO price and 40% to 50% off the June peak. Implied volatility sits at 133, higher than nearly every S&P 500 name except SanDisk, with the options market pricing a 14% earnings-day swing.
Earnings report lands tonight. It is SpaceX’s first public earnings report, and Wall Street is looking for Q2 revenue of roughly $6.88 billion, a loss of $0.23 per share, and adjusted EBITDA around $2.1 billion, with full-year 2026 estimates near $39 billion in revenue and $17.3 billion in EBITDA. The stock went in trading at about 36 times projected 2026 revenue. Two days later, on August 6, a partial early-release provision frees roughly 911.5 million employee and early-investor shares, separate from the main 180-day lockup running through December 8, 2026, and Musk’s roughly 6.4 billion shares locked until June 12, 2027.
Read the flow as a hedge and the strangeness resolves. Someone with short exposure, whether to the stock, to volatility, or to a structured product referencing SPCX, is paying pennies for insurance against the tail. Earnings hit tonight. The contract expires Friday. The identity of the buyer may follow shortly after.
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