NVIDIA leading the plunge, all scared by this Friday?

As the "Triple Witching Day" approaches, the U.S. stock market is in turmoil, with NVIDIA plunging 8% to a high overnight, the Nasdaq halting its seven-day streak of record highs, and the "fear index" VIX soaring.

According to options analysis platform SpotGamma, around $5.5 trillion worth of index, stock, and ETF options will expire on Friday. According to Goldman Sachs analyst John Marshall's estimate, the notional value of expiring options will exceed $5.1 trillion, making it the largest scale ever.

The U.S. stock market's "Triple Witching Day" refers to the day when index, stock, and ETF options contracts expire on the same day, four times a year, usually the third Friday of March, June, September, and December.

As investors and traders need to adjust their positions before these contracts expire, the market tends to experience significant volatility and increased trading volume around the "Triple Witching Day."

This options expiration coincides with the S&P Dow Jones Indices rebalancing, followed by corresponding adjustments in ETFs, adding another force to market volatility.

On Thursday, the U.S. stock market has already reacted in advance. Due to the high value of expiring contracts related to NVIDIA, NVIDIA experienced significant intraday volatility, rising 3.8% before briefly falling 4.5%, equivalent to an 8% plunge from its peak, ultimately closing down 3.5% off its historical high.

In terms of the broader U.S. market, the S&P 500 index fell for the second day in eight days and moved away from its record high, while the Nasdaq and Nasdaq 100 also dropped from their highs, with the "fear index" VIX rising over 6% and breaking above 13.

NVIDIA May Be "First in Line"

The U.S. stock market has been performing strongly recently, with the implied volatility of S&P 500 options remaining near pre-pandemic lows as the quarter-end options expiration approaches.

The notional value of options expiring on Friday represents 9.3% of the market capitalization of the Russell 3000 index. This ratio is higher than most months, second only to December 2023.

Nearly half of the S&P 500 options are still end-of-day options. Retail trading remains very active, with the proportion of 1-hand options and end-of-day 1-hand options trading in the total trading volume of the S&P 500 index SPX still high.

According to Scott Rubner, Managing Director of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Division, with the disappearance of approximately $5 billion in long gamma (referring to the positive gain in the value of an option strategy due to price fluctuations of the underlying asset), the market may experience a period of turbulence.

SpotGamma founder Brent Kochuba pointed out that the expiration value associated with call options this time is around 11 times the nominal value of put options, which is significantly different from the ratio of close to 5:1 in the previous quarter. The widening gap indicates a growing demand for upside exposure while the demand for put options continues to shrink.

Kochuba stated that this may lead to slight declines in certain high-volume stocks and indices on Friday and early next week.

NVIDIA may be "in the line of fire." Since the end of 2022, Nvidia's stock price has surged nearly 800%, making buying call options on NVIDIA increasingly popular over the past year.

According to SpotGamma data, as investors rush into call bets on NVIDIA at an unprecedented pace, the open interest in NVIDIA call options exceeds that of popular ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and other major stock indices, a situation considered "extremely rare," with about one-third of NVIDIA-related open interest options expected to expire this Friday.

According to Bloomberg, the expiration value of NVIDIA-related options is the second largest among all underlying assets, surpassing the SPDR S&P 500 ETF and other related ETFs such as the Nasdaq 100.

Analysts believe that the momentum driving NVIDIA's stock price higher may weaken after the options expire this Friday, and the "Gamma squeeze" phenomenon that has been boosting the stock price may slow down. "Gamma squeeze" refers to intense buying of call options forcing options market makers to buy more underlying stocks to hedge risks, creating a virtuous cycle of pushing up stock prices