POET Gamma Map: The Board Cleared, $8.50 Is Next?

POET Gamma Map: The Board Cleared post triple witch and $8.50 Is setup

Triple witching did its job. POET stock closed Friday at $7.80 — twenty cents shy of rescuing the $8 calls — and the entire stranded complex above $8, roughly 33,000 contracts, came off the board at the bell. We wrote in Thursday's pre-market piecethat lighter maps move faster in both directions. It took exactly one session to prove it.

POET Technologies $POET opened ECOC Monday up 4.2% at $8.13, straight through the strike everyone fought over for a month. No company news this morning. Just a photonics stock with a clean board and a catalyst calendar: ECOC 2026, Europe's largest optical communications show, opened today in Málaga with 340-plus exhibitors and more than 8,000 attendees — and the industry award winners get announced this afternoon local time, which is mid-morning in New York. POET's Blazar light source engine is nominated. The company won at last year's show in Copenhagen.

Why $8 broke like paper

For a month, dealers who sold the September $8 and $8.50 calls leaned on every rally — hedging pressure showed up as sell flow each time POET stock approached $8. Those positions expired Friday. When the market opened Monday, there was nothing left to lean. That's the whole mechanism of the cleanup trade in POET options: the resistance wasn't fundamental, it was positioning, and positioning has an expiration date.

The wall moved to 37 cents away

The gamma map now has one dominant structure in the front week: 13,469 calls at the September 25 $8.50 strike, which grew right through Friday's expiration. It sits on top of the 30-day volume shelf at $8.56. At $8.13, that test is 37 cents away — and it comes during the show. Friday's flow says traders positioned for it: the September 25 $8 calls nearly doubled to 3,629, the $9.50s more than doubled to 2,362, and the $9s built to 2,869. If $8.50 gives way with dealers short 13,000-plus contracts, the chase math from last week repeats a level higher. If it holds, the pin forms under the wall into Friday.

The October map is already loaded

Look one month out and the next battlefield is drawn. The October 16 monthly shows 12,068 calls against 9,723 puts at the $8 strike — a genuine two-sided fight — with 10,960 calls at $10 forming the October ceiling and 6,304 more at $9. Below the market, a deep put base sits at $4 through $6, over 15,000 contracts of old insurance. And the Málaga buyer we've tracked since last Monday is still there: the October 2 stack from $10 to $12.50 holds about 5,200 contracts, positioned for whatever comes out of this week.

The sequence played out the way the board said it would — hike absorbed, puts dead, cleanup done, and the first session after triple witching went looking for the next wall. Award results this morning, ECOC through Wednesday, and the company's September update window still open. Watch $8.50; the tape already is.

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