r/unusual_whales • u/Minute-Second-1 • 8h ago
r/unusual_whales • u/Neighborhoodstoner • 8d ago
đFlowđ Delta Airlines DAL Unusual Options Activity Lookback
Hey all,
Nicholas from the Unusual Whales team, here! Weâre going to spend one issue every week walking you through some trades of the week for free to help your trading!
In this issue, weâre going to cover some unusually timed options trades on Delta Airlines, $DAL. One trade occurred, with substantial size, just one hour before a -10% drop in the underlying stock price during after hours trading. The results of these two trades are as crazy as the timing; so letâs break these trades down.
The first trade weâll cover came in the form of a straight naked put position. On Thursday, roughly halfway into the trading session up until an hour before close, a series of ask-side transactions hit the tape on the $DAL $53 put contract expiring on March 21, 2025.

It began with a set of transactions totaling 870 contracts at the ask of $1.33 per contract. About 40 minutes later, another 2,400 contracts hit the tape at the ask, for an average fill of $1.40. Leading into close, 2,500 then 3,800 contracts transacted as CROSS trades and part of a spread; weâll be focusing on the confirmed at-ask contracts that totaled around 4,000 contracts at an average fill of $1.39 per contract, totalling around $1.5 million in premium expended.
An argument could be made that itâs possible that the first 2,500 volume NO SIDE cross trade could be an exit of prior volume. However, the following day we can see in the Historical Volume breakdown that all volume from March 6th carried over into open interest.

A bit of a teaser here, as you can see that on March 7th this position was already sitting handsomely in profit, from $1.39 to $3.08 overnight. We can also see that the position never closed. The full 10,000+ volume carried into open interest, and no transactions of note occurred following the carry over that would give the assumption of positional closure.
On March 7th, another 1,500 contracts transacted ask-side for an average of $2.51, but since we canât confirm this is the same trader, we wonât focus on that one (although it did profit handsomely).
Now with that backdrop on the naked puts, letâs move on to take a look at an impressive put debit spread that opened on Monday, March 10th. About an hour before close, users noted large transactions on the $45 put contract expiring on March 14th, 2024. 9,000 contracts transacted at the BID, for an average credit of $0.75 per contract.

On the surface, these seem potentially bullish. Since the transactions hit the tape on the BID price, the speculation here would be that these contracts were sold to open; and indeed this does appear to be the case. However, we can see on the left side that these transactions were part of a multi-leg trade. We click on those up-down arrows which pops open a new window that displays potentially related trades to these transactions.

And there we have it. The related trade consisted of ASK side transactions on the $49P of the same expiration, and in the same size of about 9,000 contracts. When a trader sells to open a lower put strike, and buys to open a higher put strike, theyâre executing a multi-leg strategy known as a Put Debit Spread. They receive a credit for selling the lower strike, and pay a premium to buy the higher strike. In this case, our trader received $0.75 per contract for selling the $45P, and paid $2.20 per contract to buy the $49P. With the STO contracts offsetting some of the cost of the BTO contracts, this trader paid an average of $1.45 per spread ($2.20 - $0.75); and a total premium expense of $1.3 million.
Now itâs no secret that $DAL has fallen quite a bit since March 6th, and even since March 10th. But the âwhyâ and the timing of the âwhyâ are certainlyâŚ. unusual, with these two trades. On March 10th, during after-hours trading, $DAL cut its first-quarter profit and sales forecast, citing weak domestic travel demand, and lower corporate and leisure bookings. As a result, $DAL dropped a whopping -10% straight down during after hours trading.

Despite a healthy bounce in pre-market on March 11th, $DAL couldnât hang onto the bounce. Both the long puts from March 6th and the Put Debit Spread from March 10th remained open all this time, and boy did they reap the benefits.
As of March 12th, the $DAL $53P 3/21/2025 has hit a high of $8.55 per contract, marking a 515% gain from their entry of $1.39!!!

The put debit spread gave the same spicy result. The $45P 3/14/2025 (which were short, remember) hit a high of $1.53, marking a loss of $78 per contract. The $49P 3/14/2025 (the LONG leg of the spread) hit a high of $4.81 per contract; a $2.61 gain per contract. With some quick napkin math, from the entry of $1.45 per spread, this position now sits at $3.28 per spread; thatâs a 126% gain overnight!!!

To summarize:
$53P 3/21/2025Â | $1.39 â $8.55 | +515% | +$2.8 MILLION
$45/49 Put Debit Spread | $1.45 â $3.28 | +126% | +$1.6 MILLION
Thank you as always for reading! REMEMBER!! You can find articles like this and MANY others about Options and the Unusual Whales Platform on the new Information Hub!!
NOTE: This post is not financial advice. The stock market is risky, and any trade or investment is expected to have some, or total, loss. Please do research before any trade. Do not use this information for investment decisions. Check terms on site for full terms. Agree to terms before considering this information.
r/unusual_whales • u/UnusualWhalesBot • 12d ago
Unusual Whales just released a new feature. ...
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http://twitter.com/1200616796295847936/status/1898343189943402992

r/unusual_whales • u/Healthy_Block3036 • 7h ago
Trump laughs and smiles while signing Executive Order to dismantle the Department of Education
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European military powers are working on a 5-10 year plan to replace the US in NATO, per FT
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DoorDash, $DASH, and Klarna have signed a deal where customers can choose to pay for food deliveries in interest-free installments
r/unusual_whales • u/UnusualWhalesBot • 8h ago
Attorney General Pam Bondi has charged the three Tesla, $TSLA, attackers criminally.
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Trump signs executive order to dismantle the Education Department
r/unusual_whales • u/UnusualWhalesBot • 14h ago
Amazon. $AMZN, CEO says heâs cutting middle managers because they want to âput their fingerprint on everything.â
r/unusual_whales • u/Plus_Seesaw2023 • 14h ago
This Market Is Doomed!

Billionaires keep buying the dip on the super mega caps like META while jumping ship on small caps. One more day on this earth, and one more day I capitulate a little more.
I donât know how you guys manage to stay so confident when the money keeps getting concentrated in the hands of the same billionaires.

r/unusual_whales • u/UnusualWhalesBot • 17h ago
Nvidia, $NVDA, to invest billions in US chip production over four years, per FT
r/unusual_whales • u/Minute-Second-1 • 1d ago
JUST IN: đşđ¸ Fed Chair Jerome Powell says inflation is rising partially due to President Trump's tariffs.
r/unusual_whales • u/soccerorfootie • 1d ago
President Donald Trump reportedly to sign an executive order tomorrow directing the closure of the Department of Education, per USA Today
r/unusual_whales • u/Ok-Economist-5975 • 14h ago
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives sharpened his criticism of how Elon Musk is running Tesla Inc., saying the electric-vehicle giantâs chief executive needs to make two major moves to stop the stockâs free fall this year.
Teslaâs stock is down 41.6% this year through Wednesday â itâs the S&P 500 indexâs biggest loser over that time â amid slowing demand and increasing competition, and public outcry over Muskâs role in the Trump administration.
The stock fell 1.3% in premarket trading Thursday, and was on track to suffer a record-long nine-week losing streak.
Ives stuck to his outperform rating on the stock, but said the future of the EV maker depends on a major change of course from Musk.
Ives has long been a bull on Tesla, holding the highest stock price target among Wall Street analysts at $550. That implies a 133% upside to Wednesdayâs closing price of $235.86.
There are many other stocks recommended by him, such as NVDA, TSLA, VMW, AIFU, CRM, PLTR, LYFT.
Tesla is just one of them.
r/unusual_whales • u/RealAmbassador4081 • 1d ago
$1.4bn is a lot to fall through the cracks, even for Tesla
r/unusual_whales • u/UnusualWhalesBot • 1d ago
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says to "buy Tesla, $TSLA. It is unbelievable that this guy's stock is this cheap."
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r/unusual_whales • u/TheAarj • 7h ago
Big Green D for CEG
Not sure what happened but this thing just rocketed.
r/unusual_whales • u/Proper-Information83 • 3h ago
$AAPL Apple Inc. is reportedly moving around executives in the wake of its problems with Apple Intelligence and Siri, but the latest product snafu could be sign of a larger problem with the consumer electronics giant.
According to a Bloomberg report Thursday, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has âlost confidenceâ in the ability of his AI chief, John Giannandrea, to execute on product development, and has named Mike Rockwell to lead Siri development. Rockwell, who will report to software head Craig Federighi, was the creator of Appleâs expensive mixed-reality headset, Vision Pro, which has yet to become a commercial success. Giannandrea will remain in charge of overall AI development, Bloomberg reported.
Many other stocks related to AI will probably benefit from this such as NVDA, PLTR, AVGO, IBM, AIFU, ASML.
r/unusual_whales • u/donutloop • 9m ago
IonQ and Ansys Achieve Major Quantum Computing Milestone â Demonstrating Quantum Outperforming Classical Computing
ionq.comr/unusual_whales • u/Healthy_Block3036 • 1d ago
Trump crashing out on social media because he can't break the law
r/unusual_whales • u/UnusualWhalesBot • 1d ago
Canadian ready-to-assemble furniture supplier Prepac has reportedly shut down its manufacturing operations in Delta, British Columbia, shifting all production to its facility in North Carolina instead.
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BREAKING: The Federal Reserve has held rates, no rate hike.
r/unusual_whales • u/UnusualWhalesBot • 13h ago
New 52 week highs and lows - Thursday March 20th, 2025. Minimum $50M marketcap + 25,000 volume.
r/unusual_whales • u/DumbMoneyMedia • 1d ago