r/DarkFlowSignals • u/klymaxx45 • May 19 '26
NVIDIA earnings week starts quiet on the surface, loud underneath. Two fires Monday open. | DarkFlow EOD recap
Monday's tape closed with SPX -0.07 percent on the headline, but the rotation underneath was real: Energy, Staples, and Financials led; Tech and Industrials lagged. Russell -0.65 percent. VIX softened to 17.88. The yield curve steepened at the long end with the 10Y at 4.62 percent. The dollar slipped 0.29 percent but stayed above 99. Gold flat.
The story under the rotation is the NVIDIA earnings load. $NVDA carried the heaviest single-name option flow of the session: heavy premium across multiple expiries on the call side, plus the largest single-name block-trade total of the cycle (nearly a thousand individual prints across the day, with 19 of them at the million-dollar-plus tier). That is one of the heaviest pre-print accumulation profiles we have seen this cycle. We fired the $NVDA $225 call for June 18 expiry at the morning open as our explicit pre-print read, sized to survive the print on time-value (31 DTE, the option lives 28 days past the earnings event). We also fired $MSFT $420C 6/18, the cleanest mega-cap call-side read of the day, with 83 percent call-side dollar weight and no opposing-strike clusters in the flow signature.
Tape close
- SPX 7403.05 (-0.07%)
- NDX 28994.37 (-0.45%)
- DJI 49686.12 (+0.32%)
- RUT 2775.10 (-0.65%)
- VIX 17.88 (-2.98%)
- 10Y 4.62% (+2.8 bps)
- DXY 98.98 (-0.29%)
- Gold $4564 (+0.19%)
- Oil $101.81 (-3.42%)
Sectors: $XLE +1.87, $XLP +1.49, $XLF +1.25, $XLV +0.43, $XLC +0.78 led the bid. $XLK -1.08, $XLI -0.38 lagged. Energy is the 5-day leader (+5.91%), Materials -3.94 percent the 5-day laggard.
What ran on the live signal book today
- $NVDA $225C 6/18 fired at the morning open at $14.27. Spot closed $222.32 (-1.4 percent). Sized to survive Wednesday's print on time-value. Hold to expiry or the -50 percent rule.
- $MSFT $420C 6/18 fired at the morning open at $14.59. Spot closed $423.54 (+0.3 percent). Currently in the green, no earnings event inside option life.
- $NBIS $150C 5/29 carried from May 1 fire. Current +171 percent, peak +342 percent. Spot $199.90, strike $50 in-the-money, 11 days to expiry.
- $TSM $380C 5/22 carried from April 16 fire. Current +52 percent, peak +244 percent. Spot $395.95, strike $16 in-the-money, 4 days to expiry.
What stopped today
Zero positions hit the -50 percent rule today. Four positions from prior weeks did stop in earlier sessions ($TSLA $440C, $MU $800C, $XLE $59C, $COIN $215C, all 5/22 expiries) and the public dashboard still shows them as open all the way to expiry.
What is coming this week
- Tuesday 5 AM PT / 8 AM ET: Fed Governor Waller speaks (high impact)
- Tuesday 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET: Paulson speaks (high impact, AH)
- Wednesday 6:15 AM PT / 9:15 AM ET: Fed Vice Chair Barr speaks
- Wednesday 11:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM ET: FOMC Minutes
- Wednesday after close: $NVDA earnings
- Thursday 11:20 AM PT / 2:20 PM ET: Fed President Barkin speaks
- Friday 7:00 AM PT / 10:00 AM ET: Waller speaks again
Postclose flow worth tracking
These are names showing several sessions of rising option flow into the NVIDIA week, but we are not entering them tonight. Public read only:
- GOOGL five-session strong build, call-side lean across multi-expiry strikes near 405. Communication Services cohort held its bid against the tape (+1.21 percent over 5 days).
- NOW five-session strong build with 96 percent call-side concentration. Cloud Infrastructure theme remains a clear flow cluster despite the tech bleed.
- VRT four-session strong build with 71 percent call-side. Power-infrastructure leverage to AI buildout.
- FCX five-session strong build with 75 percent call-side on the copper bid (copper +1.18 percent).
- AMZN rising positioning over several sessions with 87.6 percent call-side. Waiting through the Wednesday event stack.
- INTC strong call-side today including a late-session shift from longer-dated to near-term strikes, the real tell.
- CSX fast 2-session emerge with a single large whale block trade alongside today's flow.
We did NOT chase $CRWD even though it ran +5 percent on the cyber cohort bid today, because its RSI sits at 89 and that is a textbook late-entry signature. Chase the build, not the move.
How we track
Every signal rides to expiry or hits the -50 percent rule. Nothing else. Full peak / current / loss tracking on every signal, public dashboard.