Stocks made a record high. Two big bearish trades point to skepticism

The Nasdaq-100 is up 15% since its July low and is now 2% above its previous record from June. The S&P 500, after a two-month-long battle with surging interest rates, is back trading at an all-time high.You'd think that resilience would be met with some fanfare. Instead, the two biggest options trades on the tape Tuesday reeked of skepticism. In the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), about an hour after the opening bell on Tuesday, someone traded a 100,000-lot put spread that cost a net $44 million and likely included buying $61 million of 655-strike puts expiring in March and selling $17 million of 500-strike puts in the same expiry. It's a bearish bet that is most profitable if the SPY falls to $500 — a 35% decline from its current levels.Stock Chart IconStock chart iconSPX year to date"If you're trying to hedge, these March options are the cheapest they've been in 90 days," said Brent Kochuba of options analytics firm SpotGamma. "The vol is fairly low."Cboe's VIX Index did slip below 15 at one point Tuesday, meaning options generally got cheaper, but the put spread was the biggest trade in SPY on a day where options volume was more than 20% higher than the 30-day...