By Christine Idzelis
‘Crash insurance’ for the S&P 500 is ‘somewhat expensive’ even after its sharp rebound last week, says Garrett DeSimone of OptionMetrics
The U.S. stock market fell Monday.
The U.S. stock market kicked off December in the red, with the S&P 500 off to a shaky start to the month after its big bounce last week erased its November losses.
The S&P 500 was set up for a post-Thanksgiving “hangover,” after ripping back to its 6,850 “resistance” level last week, said Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at BTIG, in a note Monday. “While December may very well close green, just as November did, the path to get there is likely to be quite volatile yet again.”
The S&P 500 SPX fell 0.5% on Monday to end at 6,812.63, according to FactSet data. That’s after finishing a bumpy November with a 0.1% gain.
Options-trading activity suggested traders remain jittery, as insurance against a sharp fall for the S&P 500 in the near term is “somewhat expensive,” with the cost of protection rising steadily since mid-November, said Garrett DeSimone, head of quantitative research at OptionMetrics, in a phone interview Monday.
That’s despite his research showing “crash insurance on megacap tech names has gotten cheaper” since then, he said, explaining it’s likely because investors remain concerned about the outsized exposure of so-called Magnificent Seven stocks in the S&P 500 index. A drop in those S&P 500 heavyweights risks dragging down the U.S. equities index.
Meanwhile, the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS – an exchange-traded fund that holds seven Big Tech stocks including Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Google parent Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) (GOOG), Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Tesla Inc. (TSLA) and Meta Platforms Inc. (META) – fell in November to snap seven straight months of gains, according to FactSet data.
While the S&P 500 eked out a tiny gain last month, its information-technology sector XX:SP500.45 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP each saw their first monthly drops since March, according to FactSet data.
See related: Tech on pace to snap seven straight months of gains as AI fuels bubble fears
The cost of protecting against a big near-term drop in Magnificent Seven stocks reflects “a fairly moderate level of risk” and the potential for choppiness in shares of those Big Tech companies, according to DeSimone.
To help gauge fears of the stock market potentially tanking in the near term, DeSimone explained that he looks at the price of “deep out-of-the-money” put options over a five-day period. Weekly options indicate “how expensive it is to hedge very short-term crashes,” he said.
A put option contract gives a trader the right to sell shares at a specified price by a set date. Investors may use puts to potentially profit on their bet that those shares may decline or to hedge against a drop in their portfolio.
AI theme
On Monday, the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF, which seeks to equally weight its Big Tech holdings, slipped 0.1%, failing to extend its bounce in the final week of November. The ETF jumped 5.2% last week, but still finished November with a 1.8% loss, according to FactSet data.
In DeSimone’s view, the stock market recently rallied as traders in the fed-funds futures market began pricing in a “strong increase” in the probability of an interest-rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its upcoming policy meeting next week. Some of “the downside risk has tapered off in the large-cap tech names,” he said, but “bubble fears” remain in the wake of the market’s boom on artificial-intelligence enthusiasm.
Check out: Are Oracle bears too pessimistic? This analyst thinks the stock can rise 90%.
Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, the Cboe Volatility Index VIX, rose more than 5% on Monday to around 17.2, according to FactSet. Still, that’s below the measure’s long-run average of around 20, suggesting the bull market in U.S. stocks remains intact.
Meanwhile, the CNN Fear & Greed Index still was registering “extreme fear” in the stock market on Monday, although the reading has improved from a week ago, data from the gauge on CNN’s website shows.
“In our view, recent market actions reflect more market churn than broad weakness or a major rotation into defensive sectors,” said Douglas Beath, global investment strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, in a note Monday. “Whether or not the Fed cuts rates in December, we expect rate cuts in 2026,” potentially benefiting stocks along with expected tax cuts and deregulation, he wrote.
Wells Fargo Investment Institute is “constructive on the AI theme and would suggest using market pullbacks to rebalance into ancillary technology trends with more attractive valuations,” such as financials, utilities and industrials, according to Beath.
The U.S. stock market closed lower Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA and Nasdaq Composite COMP posting losses alongside the S&P 500. The Dow dropped 0.9% while the Nasdaq shed 0.4%.
-Christine Idzelis
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12-01-25 1737ET
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