YOLO on Intel? Whale-Sized Bullish Options Flow — Fundamentals and Trade Setup

Intel is a stock with unusually complex pricing drivers.

From a pure fundamentals standpoint, it’s not a pretty picture. In the latest quarter, Intel was still loss-making. Revenue ($13.7B) beat expectations but declined year-over-year. Gross margin came in at 37.9%, down both YoY and QoQ. 18A process yields underwhelmed. Inventory buffers appear to have bottomed, and the supply-demand mismatch has become increasingly acute.

But Intel is also a stock that (once) symbolized “American industry,” and it plays a meaningful role in the Trump-era MAGA narrative. Supporting companies like Intel—particularly for local job creation—has been one of the policy promises. Some globally-oriented chip designers (e.g., NVDA) may also shift part of their foundry work toward Intel to signal alignment with policy priorities. All of this forms a key part of Intel’s policy premium.

In addition, after Intel’s CEO transition, Wall Street has broadly priced in optimism that the new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan (who previously served as CEO at Cadence for nine years, during which the stock rose roughly 45x), can execute a structural turnaround—cutting costs, improving efficiency, and potentially pushing forward a separation/spin-out of the manufacturing business. Previously, in 2025, Trump reportedly announced U.S. government investment into Intel, and promised additional funding after the separation is completed. These elements contribute to Intel’s expectations premium.

That’s why Intel’s stock price has been moving under the combined forces of fundamentals, expectations, and policy. The sharp pre-earnings run-up was driven by expectations. The post-earnings plunge—down 23% in total (-17% on day one, -6% on day two)—reflected a snap-back from an overheated valuation toward weaker fundamentals. Over the last two sessions, the renewed surge appears to be policy-driven again—including headlines that Nvidia and Apple may allocate part of their chip production business to Intel.

Jumbo order analysis: peeking into whale behavior

By watching the Unusual Activity section in the moomoo app, we noticed that during yesterday’s regular session, Intel saw a wave of large bullish options orders, suggesting there may still be significant upside imagination in the market.

I broke down and recombined these prints to recreate the “whale’s” trade structure.

Whale #1

Judging from the timestamps, these four tickets were entered at the same time, and they share the same expiration—so they are very likely legs of a single multi-leg strategy. What exactly is the structure? We can recreate it in Strategy Builder on moomoo:

Enter the parameters shown above, and you’ll get the payoff diagram below:

Overall, this is a fairly aggressive bull spread—specifically a bull call spread. The dashed ** marks the current stock price. If Intel stays flat, the strategy loses money (the red region). The break-even is 56.98 (≈57)—above the pre-earnings high. Max profit is capped at 65; above 65, profits no longer increase.

Whale #2

The two orders highlighted in the blue box share the same timestamp, and the order type shows “cross”, indicating a packaged spread order. The trader bought an April 55 call and sold an equal-size December 55 call, forming a calendar spread.

Because there are two expirations, the payoff is typically evaluated at the near-term expiration (April). The result is shown below. You can see it resembles a straddle-like profile at that point in time: a big move up or down can profit, but if the stock sits near the strike (55), the position tends to lose money.

If we interpret the legs separately rather than as a combined spread, buying the shorter-dated call while selling the longer-dated call implies: bullish in the short run, but skeptical about sustained upside longer term. The short-dated call doesn’t need to be held to expiration—the "whale" can take profits once the trade works. Meanwhile, the December 55 short call leg suggests our "whale#2" believes Intel may not finish above 55 by year-end. Whether that view proves right—time will tell.

Other Whales

Beyond these two clearly structured strategies, the four tickets below appear to be single-leg directional long calls. Their tenors are roughly 49 days and 1 day, reflecting short-term bullish speculation.

In short, Unusual Activity is a window into large-trader behavior. With solid options fundamentals, readers can reverse-engineer a rich set of trade ideas. Whether the whales are “right” and should investor copy their positions is another story—and always open to interpretation.

Facing Intel's gigantic volatility: using short puts instead of long calls

Intel’s recent high volatility creates plenty of opportunity—but also tests a trader’s mindset. Here’s a practical trading “mindset tool”: use short puts as a substitute for long calls.

Many options traders feel uneasy about being long premium: leverage and violent swings create anxiety, and time decay can be psychologically exhausting. One workaround is to replace a high-volatility, time-decay-hostile long call with a more time-friendly short put.

Of course, short puts aren’t inherently “low volatility.” They only appear calmer because we intentionally choose a lower strike, or lower delta, which reduces mark-to-market swings. But because the strike is lower, the blow-up risk is also lower or null—especially if you’re genuinely willing to take assignment and own the shares at that level. And since you’re an option seller, theta works for you, not against you: if the stock doesn’t rise, you still collect time value day by day—so much so that you might not even want the stock to rally too quickly.

How do we structure it?

Options selection is essentially about matching strike and expiration. If you’re used to trading at-the-money options around delta ≈ 0.5 for big swings, then to reduce volatility, you can choose a short put around delta 0.3–0.2.

To control risk, the strike should ideally be:

– at a round number,

– near a technical support level, or

– a price where you’re comfortable owning the stock.

In Intel’s case, 35, 40, and 45 can be viewed as meaningful levels.

Among these three variables—expiration, strike, delta—any two can determine the third. Suppose we choose delta = 0.2 and a strike at 40; then the “matching” tenor would be roughly four months. That’s how you can arrive at a reasonable candidate for “short puts instead of long calls.”

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