A Barchart report today shows unusually large volume in out-of-the-money puts and calls in Intel Corp. (INTC). It may indicate that investors are still bullish on INTC despite the stock's recent weakness.
INTC is down about 3.0% in midday trading today at $87.42. This is close to its 3-month trough price of $81.88 on July 29. As a result, it has spurred huge volume in out-of-the-money puts and calls.
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INTC - last 3 months - Barchart - Aug. 24, 2026 Investors may be playing a paired trade today using puts and calls, believing that INTC is undervalued. Let's look at that play.
Unusual INTC Options Play
The Barchart Unusual Stock Options Activity Report today shows that over 11,000 put contracts traded at the $65.00 strike price expiring on October 2 (39 days to expiry). That strike price is over 25% below today's price.
Moreover, this volume is over 61 times the prior number of put contracts outstanding. It seems likely that the investors who initiated this trade are shorting the puts to collect the income.
INTC puts and calls - Barchart Unusual Stock Options Activity Report - Aug. 24, 2026 For example, at about the same time, a set of investors bought short-term call options at an “at-the-market” price ($87.00) for about half the volume.
That implies that the short-sell puts income helped pay for the long-call option buying. For example, the $0.60 premium from 11,000 puts results in $660K in income. The call option for 6,000 calls at $2.14 would have cost $1.284 million.
So, the call option cost is half covered by the put option income if these were a paired trade. This works if the investors think that INTC is near a bottom here and will increase in the next 4 days.
The bottom line is that this is a strong signal that investors doing this trade think INTC is undervalued.
INTC Price Targets
I pointed out in a recent Barchart article on Intel stock that analysts have been raising their price targets (PT) for INTC ("Analysts Keep Hiking Intel's Revenue Forecasts and Price Targets - Is INTC Still a Buy?" Aug. 18).
Yahoo! Finance shows that 48 analysts now have an average PT of $114.88, and Barchart's mean survey PT is $113.87. These are higher than prior targets and represent potential upside of over 31% from today.
Moreover, based on an estimated 8.5% FCF margin and using analysts' revenue projections, I estimated its fair market value is $595 billion in the Aug. 18 Barchart article. That is 28.4% higher than its present $463.29 billion market cap.
In other words, my FCF-based price target is 28.4% higher than its $87.42, or $112.25 per share.
The bottom line is that Intel stock looks very undervalued here. That could be the reason why investors buying these calls and shorting puts are trading in such heavy volume.
Investors should be very careful, however, in copying this trade. Buying a call option like this with such a short expiry period could result in a 100% loss of capital. It is a highly speculative trade, not suitable for long-term investors.
On the date of publication, Mark R. Hake, CFA did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
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