POET Gamma Map: $7.50 Put Wall Friday, $10 Bet Moves to Nov

POET Gamma Map ahead of 10 year note auction at 1pm today

Spot $7.33 at 10 AM, down 5% on no company news. The bond market did that. The board first, then the macro that’s moving it.

Wednesday, 10:05 AM ET. POET Technologies $POET at $7.33, down 37 cents, or 4.9%, on 2.4 million shares. No press release, no filing, nothing from the company. The 10-year Treasury printed 5.35% this morning, its highest since April 2002, the Dow dropped 500 points, and the small end of the AI trade got hit first. Four expirations on the board. We’ll walk them in order.

Friday, Oct 9: the $7.50 fight

The weekly is a put story. 6,982 puts sit at $7.50 against 856 calls, in the money by 17 cents. Below them, 1,155 puts at $7. Above spot, 4,210 calls at $8 and 3,490 at $8.50, out of the money with two sessions left. The busiest corner of the board at 10 AM was that weekly call side: 319 traded at $7.50, 464 at $8, 358 at $8.50. Fresh prints on a red open. Somebody wanted upside at a 5% discount.

The mechanics: whoever’s short those $7.50 puts is hedged by being short stock. If the tape stays under $7.50 into Friday’s close, the hedges stay on and the puts get exercised into a cleanup. If POET reclaims $7.50, 7,000 puts die and that short hedge gets bought back into the bell. We watched the same script at September’s triple witching, when the put side lost.

Oct 16: the loaded monthly

1. $8 is the pin candidate: 12,575 calls against 10,512 puts. The puts are in the money this morning, the calls aren’t.

2. $10 calls: 17,818. The biggest line on the board, and it has kept growing since September. From $7.33 that strike needs a 36% move in seven sessions.

3. $9 calls 9,004, $11 calls 5,538. Add it all up and there are about 47,000 calls from $8 up, every one of them out of the money at 10 AM.

4. $7 is the floor fight: 4,950 calls, 6,375 puts. Below that, tail puts at $6 (3,478) and $5 (7,273). That’s crash insurance, not a target.

Read it the way we read September. Out-of-the-money calls bleed delta every day the stock sits here, and dealers who are short them peel off long-stock hedges as it bleeds. Quiet supply into Oct 16. The flip side never changes: a sharp move back through $8 forces those hedges back on in a hurry. We laid out the $8 pin and the growing $10 position two days ago. The board has only gotten more lopsided since.

Oct 23 and Nov 20: the bet rolls out

Oct 23 is thin, one 4,427-contract block of $8.50 calls and little else. November is where it gets interesting. Nov 20 $10 calls carry 10,124 open and 697 traded by 10:05 AM, the heaviest single-strike volume anywhere on the board this morning. The ladder above runs 6,197 at $11 up to 4,348 at $15. Below, 7,634 calls at $8, and on the put side 3,789 at $4 and 2,503 at $7.

Nov 20 is the first monthly after the Q3 print, which lands mid-November if POET keeps its cadence. The October $10 bet has seven sessions and no catalyst. The November one has the earnings release inside its window. That’s the roll, and it happened on a down morning.

What’s actually driving the tape

Not POET. Rates. The 10-year hit 5.35% Wednesday and the 30-year 5.72%, both 24-year highs, per CNBC. The 10-year is up 60 basis points since the end of July and crude is up 20% over the same stretch. It’s global, too. The 30-year gilt touched 6% last week for the first time since 1998 and the French 10-year hit 4.95%, per CNN. The 30-year mortgage is back above 7%.

The Fed hiked a quarter point on Sept. 16 to 3.75% to 4%, and Warsh has stopped telling anyone what comes next. So the bond market is doing the signaling. After Friday’s soft jobs report it’s pricing roughly 80% odds of a hold in October. Two events today decide the rest of the week. Treasury sells $39 billion of 10-year notes at 1 PM, and the September Fed minutes hit at 2. A clean auction that stops through 5.35% is duration relief. A tail is not.

The AI complex came into this at records. Nvidia $NVDA tagged $243 on Tuesday, a hair under $6 trillion. AMD $AMD is a trillion-dollar company. The Nasdaq closed Monday at a record. Wednesday’s reversal is yields and oil, not an AI headline. And when the discount rate moves, the long-duration end of the trade reprices first and hardest. That means small-cap photonics with 70% realized vol. POET down 5% at 10 AM with the Dow down 1% is that math, not a story about the company.

One more layer. The hyperscalers have sold roughly $220 billion of bonds this year, and AI-linked issuers now pay about 115 basis points over Treasuries against 78 for the broad investment-grade market. Credit is where AI risk gets priced first now. Equity reads it the next morning.

Discipline is key

1. The first tick after the 1 PM auction isn’t a verdict. Wait for the 2 PM minutes and the close.

2. Friday’s line is $7.50. Above it, the put side loses again. Below it, the cleanup is on and the October board gets heavier.

3. Oct 16 is the real date. About 47,000 calls above spot either find a bid or expire, and the position that survives is the November one.

4. Nothing in the chain is a company signal. The company’s next scheduled word is the Q3 release.

Market observations, not trading advice.

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