Asia Colour

Post-Jackson Hole, the desk saw aggressive Call Spread buying, but also witnessed heavy selling of calls around the 100k strike out to Mar 2025. Does this mean that the market is bullish but not expecting a blow-out move so soon?

Even with higher spot, BTC and ETH vols are currently more skewed for Puts than Calls till Oct. This is surprising given the overwhelmingly bullish sentiment. It possibly indicates that the market was well positioned for this move and was very quick to take profit by selling calls. 

While the move higher in price has been decisive, the vols are indicating hesitation in the market. As front-end vols drift lower, it is likely that BTC spot will continue to chop around the 62k-67k range in the near term.

NVIDIA earnings (28 Aug) and US PCE (30 Aug) are due this week but we do not foresee any major surprises from these risk events.

Trade Idea:

The trend is your friend. Put on some bullish trades for Q4. Optimize upside with zero cost ERKO Seagulls.

BTC Dec ERKO Seagull

• Buy 75k call with 100k knock-out
• Sell 50k put
• Cost: ZERO
• Max payout: 148.4% pa or $25k per BTC if spot price is just below 100k level at expiry.

(Spot ref: 64,000)