Traders at work at the New York Stock Exchange on May 28, 2026.
new york stock exchange
The rally in software stocks has gone from recovery to raging bull market, with traders betting they will continue to rise further.
of iShares Expand Technology Software ETF (IGV) After Friday’s 5% rise, the stock is up 35% from its April lows on the back of double-digit percentage gains. ServiceNow and working day. Options traders have been building up bullish positions in the ETF, with trading volume more than five times the daily average over the past 30 days, and call volume outnumbering puts 4 to 1.
Traders bought more than 50,000 calls on IGV in Friday’s trading, compared to just under 6,000 puts. Even after the big move with ServiceNow; sales force and oracle On Friday, call option volume for each stock exceeded put volume by a factor of five, according to data from ThinkOrSwim.
According to Spot Gamma, more IGV options were traded than the semiconductor ETF SMH as of midday Friday, with $120 million of the total IGV premium of $140 million in call contracts.
“We have stabilized the dispersion of IGV and SOX and expect mean reversion to continue,” said Dan Deming, managing partner at KKM Financial. “It was very dramatic. Our trades were more long soft than short semi.”
Indeed, some traders have chosen to hedge call buys on IGV with spreads, and some of the day’s largest notional trades were call sells, including a multimillion-dollar seller of a 90-strike call expiring in December.
After these 90 strikes, the most popular contract by volume was the 105 strike call on June 18th when over 20,000 contracts were traded. It takes a little more than 5% movement to break even.
