Apple reaches $700bn market cap

It only took a few minutes to rack-up 100,000 option contracts in early trading as Apple’s market cap surged to a record. The shares touched $119.75 valuing the company in excess of $700 billion. After 15-minutes of trading, option dealers had traded more than 200,000 contracts with the most commonly traded strike of 120.0 accounting for a little over one-quarter of total volume. Around 50,000 call options at the 120.0 strike have dominated trading compared to only 8,000 puts. Bearish plays attracted far less attention across the board as bullish sentiment was maintained. Option implied volatility is up by 4% to 22.6% on Apple options.     

Chart – Call option activity dominated as shares in Apple surged