The Ugliest Stocks in the Market Just Got a Very Expensive Vote of Confidence

Summary

The broader market has been in a mood lately, and it's not subtle. Semiconductors have led a sharp rotation lower. Micron Technology NASDAQ: MU has shed a third of its value in two weeks, and even the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. NASDAQ: SPCX IPO story that had everyone dreaming about space-based data centers has cooled off since shares priced above their offering range. Sentiment has swung hard against anything pre-revenue and speculative, and the sell-off has been broad enough that even strong long-term narratives are getting caught in the downdraft. That's exactly the environment where institutional options traders start making their move. Andrew Keene, founder of AlphaShark.com and a 25-year veteran of the Chicago Board Options Exchange trading floor, tracks large institutional bets in the options market. His approach is to watch for oversized call purchases in specific stocks and expirations, then follow the money. Keene says he rarely even looks at what a company does before entering a trade. What matters is size, timing, and conviction, along with technical signals like relative strength and average daily trading range. Three names have caught his attention this week, all of them down sharply from their highs, and all of them showing unusually large institutional call buying. Keene's own positions run out to October, December, and January, giving each trade months to play out rather than days. Investors who would rather skip the options market entirely can still use the same signals, whether that means buying shares outright, setting a stop loss near recent lows, or simply watching for a shift in sentiment before stepping in. Nuclear Newcomer Draws an October BetX-Energy TodayXEX-Energy$15.48 +1.46 (+10.41%) As of 02:58 PM Eastern52-Week Range$13.29▼$37.10Price Target$37.86 X-Energy NASDAQ: XE priced its IPO in April and jumped as high as $37 in its first days of trading. The stock has since fallen, cutting its value by nearly two-thirds. The nuclear ...