Cboe's weekly note says skew jumped on demand for downside protection, with hedging concentrated in AI and chip stocks.
SKEW closed Friday at 168.59, its highest since Feb 2025.
The BuySide mostly sold chip puts. Across 19 semis names and ETFs, they added 758k short puts and 427k long, net 331k fewer. Net puts fell in 17 of the 19.
Cboe Global Markets is looking at listing perpetual futures based on the Cboe Volatility Index, as US exchanges race to bring the highly levered instruments that dominate the crypto market to new asset classes.