Palantir Bears Spend Millions on Options Even as Stock Rallies: Options Chatter

$Palantir (PLTR.US)$ stock’s rebound from its lowest in almost three months failed to send the bears packing. Bears outnumbered bulls in the list of 16 block option trades posted so far involving contracts linked to the stock.

The biggest of the bearish trades involved an active buyer paying a $2.44 million premium for put options that give the holder the right to sell 150,000 Palantir shares at $95 by Sept. 19. That strike price is about $2 below the current stock price.

(To see Palantir's options chain, click here. For the unusual option trades, click here.)

Palantir shares have tumbled more than 20% from a peak in mid-February amid concerns that the software company that generates more than half of its revenue from government contracts could be a victim of U.S. federal spending cuts.

Those concerns started waning Monday after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced its purchase of Palantir Maven Smart System for deployment within NATO’s Allied Command Operations, sending the stock rising 4.6%.

“Palantir's contract win at NATO for the AI-enabled Maven system could be a sign the company has positive exposure to increased defense spending that can offset the US government's spending pullback and other efficiency initiatives,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and Damian Reimertz wrote in a note yesterday.

Still, Palantir’s short volume rose to 16.7 million shares Monday from 13 million shares in the previous session, exchange data tracked by moomoo showed. The stock is now trading at 492 times earnings, still pricier than the 28 times earnings for the tech-heavy $NASDAQ 100 Index (.NDX.US)$ .

The stock’s more than 8% gain over the past two sessions has taken the share price above the $92.30 average analysts’ price target, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Only 23% of the analysts who cover the stock have a buy rating, while almost 62% have a hold recommendation.

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