Earnings
Tuesday, July 28th 2026
Chip Stocks Are Not Priced for Big Tech's Earnings Week
Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Apple carry nearly three times the near-term volatility premium of the chip complex tied to their AI spending.
Summary
The article highlights that options on the four big‑tech companies reporting earnings this week are priced far richer—median 3.41 times the implied volatility of the following week—than any other stocks or funds, while chip makers and most other assets show much lower ratios. This steep premium reflects heightened event risk tied to AI spending and earnings, whereas the broader market, including the Fed‑sensitive sectors, remains comparatively cheap. The analysis suggests the week is unusually expensive for the reporters and ordinary for the chip sector and other funds.
By Matt Amberson
July 28, 2026
Microsoft and Meta report Wednesday after the close, Apple and Amazon Thursday, and on Monday's settled board the options charge far more steeply inside those four names than anywhere else. They price the four sessions to Friday at a median 3.41 times the implied vol of the week that follows: Microsoft 3.96, Meta 3.67, Amazon 3.16, Apple 2.08. Nothing else is close: 1.39 for SPY and QQQ, which hold all four, 1.32 for eight chipmakers with no print of their own in either leg, and 1.27 for five funds holding none of them.
What the ratio measures
The July 31 expiry covers Tuesday through Friday. Its at-the-money implied vol over the forward vol to August 7 prices that window against the next one, off /datav2/hist/monies/implied. Two caveats: the comparison week carries the July jobs report, and 1.00 is not the null. Day counts alone put a flat surface at 1.06, and four index funds across 88 non-cluster Mondays print 1.15.
Microsoft's per-expiry ATM implied vol, captured Tuesday before the open. The July 31 dot, the first spanning Wednesday's report, prints 86.79 against 45.61 at the third Friday of August.
Broadcom's vol is high, but not for its customers' week
CNBC's week-ahead put the dependence plainly: the chip rally "hinges on continued AI spending from hyperscalers." Broadcom's options are anything but calm, 51.2% implied at the 90th percentile of their year.
Its own report is 37 days out, though, and its July 31 expiry prices at 1.29, inside the 1.20 to 1.32 band of the five funds holding none of the four.
Broadcom's Outlook, captured Tuesday before the open; that percentile is the ex-earnings series.
The obvious objection is the Fed, inside the same expiry. It is priced, and to me that is the point: staples, healthcare, utilities, energy and the small-cap fund IWM carry it too and land at 1.27.
The Macro Calendar dates the decision inside the same expiry, Wednesday 2pm ET.
Every name pulled, none dropped, from Monday's settled board. Tuesday's 10am tick: 3.642, 1.507, 1.442 (unstarred eight), 1.382.
The gap does not clear a bootstrap
The eight clean chipmakers sit above the megacap-free funds and below the two that hold the reporters, on both boards; all fourteen together sit a hair below, 1.26 against 1.27. But 10,000 resamples put that 0.056 gap at a 90% interval of minus 0.02 to plus 0.10, an ordering only.
A further eight liquid semis report inside the same week, Qualcomm and Lam Research among them, and are excluded. Six of the fourteen carry a scheduling star the figure explains.
Nine quarterly clusters since July 2024 do not generalize it. Against staples, the megacap-free control the cross-section uses, the gap reverses: plus 0.06 from the Friday before each cluster, 6 of 9 positive, and plus 0.11 from the Monday, 7 of 9. One of six control-and-basis combinations is significant: SMH against QQQ from the Friday, 0.056 below its ordinary-week gap, 7 of 9 negative, p = 0.021 one-sided.
All of it is proportional. In vol points the reporters add 80.2 to the event week, the eight chipmakers 48.5, the two funds holding all four 18.1, the five holding none 12.8: on points the chips outrank the index funds their ratio sits under.
The business link the coverage describes may well be real. The options are saying something narrower: this is an expensive week to own the four companies reporting, and an ordinary Fed week for everyone else.
Pull it up yourself: load a chipmaker in the Trade Builder, zoom to one month, and read its per-expiry ATM IV dots against the expiry spanning its customers' prints.
$MSFT $META $AMZN $AAPL $AVGO $SMH $QQQ $SPY
#ImpliedVolatility #Earnings #Semiconductors #TermStructure #EventRisk #BigTech
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