FOMO-Driven Call Buying Soars as Traders Chase S&P 500’s Furious Run

Traders keen to seize on further gains after the S&P 500 Index hit its first record since February are betting on stock-market darlings that they expect will surpass the index’s ascent.

The signals from derivatives trading are clear, strategists said, as investors last week aggressively bought call options — a wager that an asset’s price will keep increasing. Among the highlights: a rush into Nvidia Corp. on Wednesday that pushed the volume of call contracts on the stock to almost triple that of bearish puts, the biggest gap since January; a jump to a four-month high in the call-put ratio on the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund; and a drop to a two-month low in the cost of hedging against a selloff in Meta Platforms Inc.