Tech stocks' resilience has puzzled investors. The options market could hold some clues

The unexpected never happens when you're looking for it, which may explain why tech stocks have remained so strong in the face of surging rates and questions about the AI complex. In the options pits, traders are the most prepared for a pullback since early Summer. The Nasdaq-100 Index declined as much as 1.8% Thursday following a report from the Financial Times that ChatGPT owner OpenAI's revenues are coming up short. As the index slid, the number of open put contracts tied to the Invesco QQQ Trust relative to calls reached 1.49, the highest since the last week of June, according to Barchart data.The metric isn't just the result of a one-day anomaly: the ratio has been moving in favor of puts since August, despite a steady climb in big-tech stock prices that culminated in a string of all-time highs up through Tuesday. On Wednesday, the two biggest options trades of the session, one in the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and another in Meta Platforms (META), were bearish. In short, options traders have been loading up on protection on fears of a pullback, whether driven by rising rates of cracks in the AI narrative. Interpreting the message from the options market at ...