SanDisk (SNDK.US) surged 11%, storage and chip stocks saw massive volume in "short-term options," has the "AI stock god" made a move again?

On Friday, approximately $96 million in short-term call options poured into four AI chip stocks: SanDisk, Micron, Intel Corporation, and Marvell. During intraday trading, SanDisk surged as much as 11%. Watching this wave of "massive volume" short-term options trading flow, CNBC host Jim Cramer wrote on social platform X: "Judging by this, it looks exactly like Leopold is back!" If you have been following investment opportunities in the global AI computing power and large model sectors, you are certainly no stranger to Leopold Aschenbrenner. This former core researcher at OpenAI and founder of the AI-themed hedge fund Situational Awareness, who carried a dazzling halo, was once known for using extremely high leverage and frantically buying short-term call options in semiconductor and AI companies. In 2024, the fund he founded started with about $225 million and, through high-leverage AI bets, rode all the way up to about $45 billion. In July of this year, the fund suffered a "spectacular blowup," plunging 67% during the July AI sector pullback and selling most of its holdings to Citadel. The UK's Financial Times listed it as the largest single loss in hedge fund history. But despite this, the fund still recorded a positive return of about 80% that year. At the end of July, in a letter to investors, Aschenbrenner said he would "fight another day," "learn the necessary lessons," and promised that public market investments would be "managed on a fully paid basis." Last week, CNBC reported that the fund had re-entered options positions in names such as AMD, Bloom Energy, and CoreWeave. This time, the targets shifted to storage and chipsits two largest heavy positions before the crash. Composition of the nearly $100 million in call options According to intraday trading data compiled by ZeroHedge, the details of this batch of call options expiring on October 2 are as follows: Micron (MU.US): strike price 1000, about 10,000 contracts, premium about $44 million. SanDisk (SNDK.US): strike price 1600, about 4,200 contracts, premium about $41 million. Intel Corporation (INTC.US): strike price 115, about 20,000 contracts, premium about $7.3 million. Marvell (MRVL.US): strike price 250, about 3,500 contracts, premium about $3.85 million. SanDisk was trading nearby at the time, already above the strike price; Micron was around 990, with the strike price almost at the money; Intel Corporation and Marvell's strike prices were slightly above their current prices. Micron and SanDisk's weekly highs were $1255 and $2354, respectively, and current levels still remain a considerable distance from those highs. For contracts with two weeks to expiry, time decay and gamma sensitivity are both extremely high, leaving almost zero margin for error in directional judgment. Cramer pointed out that the October expiry falls after Micron's fourth-quarter earnings reporta report that has historically moved the entire storage sector. He has been optimistic on this sector since August, believing that AI data center demand and supply discipline are reshaping the storage industry's traditional boom-bust cycle. Why the market points to the "AI stock god" SEC filings have not yet disclosed the identity of the buyer, but market speculation about Aschenbrenner has a basis. The most direct clue is the targets. Situational Awareness's regulatory filing at the end of June showed SanDisk holdings of about $5.7 billion and Micron holdings of about $5.6 billion, its two largest positions. This batch of nearly $100 million in option premiums happens to be concentrated in the same two stocks. The trading method also matches. The fund was previously known for extremely high short-term leverage bets on AI momentum, with leverage once reaching as high as 400%. Short-dated, large-scale call options are precisely its signature tooltriggering market makers' gamma hedging buying through large purchases, pushing stock prices higher in the short term. The timeline also connects. According to a September 11 report by the Financial Times, Aschenbrenner had already rebuilt positions through Flex Options in names such as AMD, Intel Corporation, SK Hynix, SanDisk, and CoreWeave. Nomura strategist Charlie McElligott captured the signal at the time: a combined $315 million in option premiums flowed into AI and semiconductor names over multiple days, involving $1.1 billion in Delta exposure. He also noticed that the call skew for semiconductor ETFs over the next three months had surged to historic highs. Changed tools, unchanged logic Unlike in July, when it relied on total return swaps (TRS) provided by major banks such as Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. to obtain leverage, Aschenbrenner is believed this time to have switched to fully-paid optionsmaximum loss is limited to the premium paid, and in theory there is no margin call or blowup risk. This shift has practical reasons. After the crash, JPMorgan terminated its lending relationship with the fund, the SEC requested information from the banks that financed it, and the brokerages it had previously worked with also came under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. According to the Financial Times, Aschenbrenner turned to Clear Street, a broker focused on the technology sector, to re-establish cooperation. But the strategic logic has not fundamentally changed. McElligott observed that this batch of trades showed a linked characteristic of "spot rising, volatility also rising"highly similar to the market pattern before the July crash. It is still about building large-scale concentrated exposure in momentum names with limited liquidity, with the intention of triggering chain-reaction price increases. Once momentum reverses, the premium goes to zero entirely, and it cannot be buffered by adjusting leverage. The fund's third-quarter 13F report will be submitted in mid-November, and only then can regulatory filings confirm the true buyer of this batch of trades. This article is reprinted from "Wall Street See" (Wallstreetcn), author: Gao Zhimou, GMTEight editor: Zhang Jinliang.