🤝 AMZN ≈$9.9M Deep-ITM $220 Call Cross — Negotiated Block at a Heavily-Traded Strike, Direction Unproven (Open/Close Provisional)

📅 June 30, 2026 | 🔥 Unusual Activity Detected

✅ Updated 2026-07-01: next-day OPRA OI confirms the OPEN (see RESOLVED box).

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🎯 The Quick Take

At 10:23:58 ET this morning, a ≈$9.87M negotiated block cross landed in AMZN's September $220 calls — 3,350 contracts, deep in the money, printed off the lit book between two known counterparties. No paired stock leg showed up in the equity tape. This is the third consecutive session with institutional-scale activity at the AMZN $220 September strike, but unlike the June 23 financing-reversal cross or the June 29 call ratio spread (which resolved as a transfer), today's print is a single-leg QCC block cross with no provable direction. Because it was matched off the lit book, it offers neither a clean aggressor read nor a usable implied-vol tell (a cross takes no liquidity, so it can't move the contract's IV — more on that below). Open vs. close is now ✅ RESOLVED — the July 1 pre-market OPRA OI print confirms an OPEN (OI 10,752 → 14,223, Δ +3,471 ≈ the 3,400-contract size), so this was a genuine new opening long-call position. See the RESOLVED box below.

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📊 Company Overview

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) is the world's largest e-commerce company and the dominant cloud-infrastructure provider through Amazon Web Services (AWS). Sector: Consumer Discretionary — Internet Retail & Cloud Infrastructure.

• Market Cap: ≈$2.5 trillion (5th-most-valuable public company globally), per stockanalysis.com
• Industry: Internet Retail & Cloud Infrastructure (SIC: Retail Stores — Computer & Software Stores / Cloud)
• Trailing net income: ≈$30.3B; EBITDA ≈$160.6B (≈21% margin)
• AWS Q1 2026 growth: +28% YoY — fastest in 15 quarters, per Yahoo Finance
• Primary businesses: Online retail marketplace, AWS cloud, third-party seller services, advertising, Anthropic AI partnership, Trainium custom AI silicon, Zoox robotaxi, Alexa+ agentic assistant

Amazon's mid-2026 story is the AI infrastructure super-cycle: a ≈$200B 2026 capex commitment to AWS and AI buildout, a $100B+ Anthropic AWS compute deal, and three straight quarters of AWS GPU price hikes — offset by near-zero trailing free cash flow that triggered an ≈11.5% 30-day stock pullback. With Q2 2026 earnings on July 30 sitting squarely inside this September expiry, the next 30 days are dense with binary risk.

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💰 The Option Flow Breakdown

📊 What Just Happened

At 10:23:58 ET on June 30, 2026, 3,350 contracts of the AMZN September 18, 2026 $220 Call crossed at $29.45 per contract, for a net premium of ≈$9.87M (3,350 × $29.45 × 100).

The Tape — June 30, 2026 @ 10:23:58 ET:

Key trade parameters:

• 💵 Intrinsic value: ≈$19.32 ($239.32 spot − $220 strike) — the call is ≈$19 in the money, not a lottery ticket
• ⏰ Time value: ≈$10.13 (premium above intrinsic, at risk to time decay)
• 🎯 Delta: ≈0.73 — behaves like owning 0.73 shares per contract; 3,350 × 100 × 0.73 ≈ 244,550 share-equivalents of delta exposure
• 🔎 Mechanism: 🤝 QCC negotiated block cross — a broker matched a buyer and seller off the public book between known counterparties. NOT a lit sweep. NOT an auction. No urgency language applies.
• 📋 Stock leg check: The equity tape (±60 seconds) shows NO paired ≈245,000-share block. This distinguishes today's trade from AMZN's June 23 print, which carried a simultaneous stock block consistent with a delta-hedged financing reversal. Today's cross stands alone in the options tape.

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✅ OPEN/CLOSE — RESOLVED: July 1 Pre-Market OPRA OI Confirms an OPEN

The July 1 pre-market OPRA snapshot (reflecting June 30 EOD) is now in. Verdict: OPEN CONFIRMED. Open interest at the Sep $220 call rose in lockstep with the print, so today's block was a genuine new opening long-call position.

OI rose by ≈3,471, closely matching the 3,400-contract print, so this was a genuine new opening long-call position (BTO) — the bullish read is confirmed.

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🤓 What This Actually Means — Plain English

Let me break this down carefully, because this trade is more nuanced than a "whale buys $10M in calls" headline.

What happened, exactly:

A broker facilitated a 3,350-contract block in AMZN's September $220 calls between two parties who already agreed on the $29.45 price — the definition of a QCC block cross. It printed off the public order book, off-exchange, between known counterparties. There was a buyer and a seller.

Why it's different from the last two AMZN trades:

• June 23: A large AMZN $220 call cross that DID carry a near-simultaneous stock block in the equity tape — a textbook delta-hedged QCC, consistent with a financing reversal or synthetic position. The stock leg was the diagnostic tell.
• June 29: A 1.70:1 call ratio spread that looked significant intraday but resolved with OI barely moving — identified as a transfer. No new directional conviction confirmed.
• June 30 (today): A single-leg $220C cross with no visible equity leg. This removes the strongest argument for a pure financing/delta-hedge structure (unlike June 23), but it does NOT automatically make this a clean directional bull bet either.

Why we can't read direction from this print — not from the spread, and not from IV. A block cross prints at a negotiated, "stopped" price matched off the lit book, so two tools that work on ordinary trades both fail here:

• The usual where-did-it-land-in-the-spread aggressor read doesn't apply — a cross isn't lifting an offer or hitting a bid; it's a pre-agreed match.
• And — importantly — the contract's implied-vol move can't tell us direction either. On a lit trade, an aggressive buyer who lifts offers forces market makers to re-mark IV up, so a rising IV is a genuine buy tell. But a cross takes no liquidity — it consumes no displayed depth and its print price doesn't even enter the bid/ask-based IV calculation. So any IV wiggle around a cross is ambient (unrelated lit flow at the strike, skew drift, or a market maker's after-the-fact markup), not the cross's own buy or sell pressure. We will not lean on it.

Why direction is genuinely unproven — and why we can't say "bullish":

• A block cross means a known counterparty sold the 3,350 calls to whoever took the other side. We cannot see which side held the view, nor their identity or intent.
• The buyer of 3,350 deep-ITM calls (delta ≈0.73) could be hedging an off-tape position — a futures short, a swap overlay, or another OTC instrument invisible to any options tape.
• At delta ≈0.73, this block carries ≈244,550 share-equivalents. If truly unhedged, that is a meaningful directional bet on AMZN. But we cannot verify "unhedged" from the OPRA tape alone.

Bottom line in plain English:

Institutional money is clearly active at the AMZN $220 September strike — three notable events in four trading days. The mechanism is a confirmed negotiated block, but its direction is genuinely not provable from today's tape — a cross gives us neither an aggressor read nor a usable IV signal. Whether today's print is a new long building ahead of Q2 earnings on July 30, a transfer, or a partial close is now confirmed by the July 1 OI print as a genuine new OPEN (OI rose 10,752 → 14,223, Δ +3,471 ≈ the 3,400-contract size). Think of it as "heavy institutional traffic at a known strike, mechanism confirmed, a genuine new opening long — but direction (which side holds the view) still unproven."

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📈 Technical Setup / Chart Check-Up

YTD Performance Chart

Amazon (AMZN) is navigating a classic AI bull-vs-bear tug-of-war in 2026. The bull case: AWS reaccelerated to 28% growth — its fastest pace in 15 quarters — and operating margins hit a record 13.1% in Q1 2026 per CNBC's earnings coverage. The bear case: management committed to ≈$200B in 2026 capital expenditure per Yahoo Finance, which crushed trailing free cash flow to ≈$1.2B, triggering an ≈11.5% 30-day pullback per stockanalysis.com.

At ≈$239.32 intraday on June 30, AMZN is sitting almost exactly on its dominant $240 gamma level — the most important near-term technical pivot in the entire chain.

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Gamma-Based Support & Resistance Analysis

The gamma exposure (GEX) map for AMZN shows a remarkable concentration of dealer hedging activity pinned to current price, with the $240 strike as the single most powerful level in the chain:

🔵 Support Levels — Put Gamma Floors Below Price:

🟠 Resistance Levels — Call Gamma Ceilings Above Price:

What this means for traders:

AMZN is sandwiched between its single largest support level ($240, 44.62B GEX) and its single largest resistance level ($250, 47.38B GEX) — just 4.2% above. This is a textbook gamma-pin setup: price tends to gravitate toward $240 and face systematic dealer selling as it approaches $250. A sustained break above $250 would require large, persistent institutional buying to overcome the call-gamma supply.

Notice: the $220 strike where today's block crossed carries 17.18B in total GEX — not the biggest level, but meaningful enough that dealers are actively hedging there. That existing dealer positioning is part of why this strike keeps attracting institutional size.

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Implied Move Analysis

The options market is pricing the following moves for AMZN across upcoming expirations:

The key number for today's trade:

The Sep 18 expiry carries a ±17.85% / ±$42.86 implied move — the expiry of today's crossed block. The upper range of $282.91 (≈+18% from spot) would put the $220 call's intrinsic value at ≈$62.91, a near-doubling of today's $29.45 print. The lower range of $197.19 (≈−18% from spot) would render the $220 call completely worthless at expiry — the full $29.45 per contract lost.

Translation for regular folks: With AMZN's Q2 earnings on July 30 inside this expiry, the market is pricing in potential swings of more than $42 in either direction over the next 80 days. The $220 call is ≈$19 in the money right now, but that intrinsic cushion can evaporate if AMZN slides toward $220 or below. This is NOT a defensive position — the downside to zero is real.

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🎪 Catalysts

🔥 Upcoming Catalysts — Inside This Sep 18 Expiry

Q2 2026 Earnings — July 30, 2026 (CONFIRMED, after market close)

This is the pivotal binary catalyst for the September expiry. Confirmed by MarketChameleon and TipRanks:

• 📊 Guided revenue: $194.0B–$199.0B (+16% to +19% YoY), per Yahoo Finance
• 🔑 Key metrics to watch: AWS growth rate (can it hold ≈28%?), operating margin trajectory, and how much of Q1's outsized EPS was the one-time $16.8B Anthropic investment gain (which won't repeat in Q2), per Futurum
• 💰 Capex watch: Any upward revision to the ≈$200B 2026 capex figure could extend the FCF drawdown and put pressure on the stock, per coindcx's Q1 recap
• 📈 Street consensus: ≈$313–$316 12-month price target, per stockanalysis.com, with 48 Buys and 0 Sells — the analyst community is broadly constructive

AWS GPU Price Hike — Third Consecutive Quarter (June 26, 2026)

AWS raised reserved-GPU prices for the third straight quarter, lifting AMZN 2.5% on June 26. Per TIKR, the Street held its ≈$312 consensus without blinking — treating this as a demand signal in a supply-constrained cloud AI market. Three consecutive price hikes mean AWS has pricing power right now, even at elevated capex levels.

Anthropic Mega-Deal — Progress Through Sep 18 (April 20, 2026 announcement)

Amazon agreed to invest an additional $25B in Anthropic, tied to a $100B+, 5-gigawatt AWS compute commitment from Anthropic. Over 1M Trainium2 chips are already running Claude in production; per SemiAnalysis, Trainium2 is sold out and Trainium3 is largely pre-ordered. Nearly 1GW of combined capacity is targeted by end-2026.

Zoox Robotaxi — NHTSA Decision Window (ongoing)

Zoox unveiled an updated "production-intent" robotaxi on June 24, 2026 with a commercial launch targeted for later in 2026, pending an NHTSA driverless exemption (up to 2,500 vehicles). Per Startup Fortune, NHTSA has no fixed decision deadline — this is binary option value on an uncertain timeline.

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✅ Recent Catalysts — Already Happened (Context)

• Q1 2026 earnings (April 29, 2026): Revenue $181.5B (+17% YoY, beat), AWS $37.6B (+28%), operating income $23.9B (+30%), record 13.1% operating margin — per CNBC and qz.com. The headline EPS of $2.78 vs ≈$1.63 consensus was partly inflated by the $16.8B one-time Anthropic gain.
• Prime Day 2026 (June 23–26, 2026): Four-day event moved to June across 26 countries, per aboutamazon and NBC News.
• Alexa for Shopping unification (May 13, 2026): Rufus chatbot retired and folded into a unified Alexa agent, per CNBC and GeekWire.
• Alexa+ Agentic Ads debut (Cannes Lions, June 2026): First ad format taking users from ad exposure to purchase completion inside a voice conversation, per digitalapplied.

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🎲 Price Scenarios — Sep 18, 2026 Expiry

Using the ±17.85% / ±$42.86 implied move and key gamma levels:

📈 Bull Case — AMZN above $250 by Sep 18

What gets us there: Q2 earnings on July 30 beats on AWS growth rate, capex trajectory moderates, Q3 guidance surprises. AWS holds ≈28% growth into the Anthropic backlog ramp. Street's ≈$310–$316 target starts to look achievable.

Gamma path: Breaking the $250 wall (47.38B GEX, net +27.55B call-biased) requires sustained buying to overcome dealer supply. Above $250, next clusters at $255 and $260 offer less resistance. The implied-move upper range of $282.91 by Sep 18 would put the $220 call's intrinsic value at ≈$62.91 — a ≈2.1× gain from today's $29.45 print.

Probability: Meaningful but not the base case; AMZN needs to break above its single strongest gamma ceiling AND sustain it through earnings.

🎯 Base Case — AMZN consolidates $230–$250

Most likely near-term path: AMZN oscillates in the gamma pin zone, held up by $240 support (44.62B) and capped by $250 resistance (47.38B), as the market waits for the July 30 earnings binary to resolve. Time decay eats into the AMZN $220 call's ≈$10.13 of time value — even if intrinsic holds.

At $240 spot on Sep 18, the call carries ≈$20 intrinsic but near-zero time value, for a total value of ≈$20 versus the $29.45 entry — a ≈32% loss if the stock simply stays flat from here. The gamma data supports consolidation; the catalyst clock favors movement.

📉 Bear Case — AMZN tests $220 or below

What breaks it: Q2 earnings miss on AWS growth, a capex surprise upward, a material FCF miss, or a macro-driven risk-off move. Per coindcx, trailing FCF is already crushed to ≈$1.2B — any doubt on monetization compounds the pressure.

Gamma path: Losing $235 (27.06B support) accelerates toward $230 (26.70B). Below $230, $225 and $220 are the next gamma floors. At the $220 strike, the call expires at the money and all time value is lost. Below $220 at expiry, the position loses its entire $29.45 per contract. The implied-move lower range of $197.19 represents a full wipeout scenario.

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💡 Four-Reader Interpretation

🎰 YOLO Trader

What you see: Nearly $10M in deep-ITM AMZN calls crossed 80 days out — the third institutional print at this strike in a week. Easy story, right?

Honest take: Pump the brakes. 🛑 This is a negotiated block cross between known counterparties — not a market order slamming the offer. We don't know the buyer's net position, whether they're hedged off-tape, or or whether their view is even directional. (The July 1 OI print did confirm this was a genuine new OPEN, not a transfer — OI rose 10,752 → 14,223 — but that only settles open/close, not which side holds the view.) Chasing deep-ITM calls at ≈$29.45 (≈$10 of which is time value that decays to zero by Sep 18 if AMZN goes nowhere) is expensive for limited leverage. If you want AMZN upside expression before July 30 earnings, a defined-risk bull call spread (e.g., buying the $245 call / selling the $260 call) costs less and caps the downside. The July 1 OI confirmed this was a genuine new OPEN (OI 10,752 → 14,223), but that still doesn't tell you which side holds the directional view.

📈 Swing Trader

What you see: Repeated institutional clustering at the $220 September strike — and gamma data showing $240 as the current magnetic anchor with $250 as the ceiling.

Honest take: The gamma map is cleaner than the options print for actionable levels. AMZN is pinned to $240 support (44.62B GEX). Buy dips toward $235–$240, target $250; use July 30 earnings as the position reset point. The implied move to Sep 18 is ±17.85% — this is not a low-vol environment. Sizing down into the July 30 binary and sizing up on post-earnings confirmation is the disciplined approach. The Stifel target at $319 and Truist at $320 imply 30%+ from current levels — achievable if AWS execution stays on track, but a stretch on a single earnings cycle.

🛡️ Premium Collector

What you see: Elevated implied vol (±17.85% through Sep 18) with AMZN pinned at a major gamma level. Rich time values available across the chain.

Honest take: The $250 call wall (net +27.55B) is the natural sell point for a covered-call or cash-secured-put strategy. If you own AMZN, selling a covered $250 call against your shares collects elevated premium while the gamma ceiling provides natural resistance. If you don't own shares, an out-of-the-money cash-secured put at $230 (strong 26.70B gamma support, net GEX −7.74B) gives you a bullish entry at a 3.9% discount with dealer-buying support on any breach. Risk: July 30 earnings can gap through both levels in either direction — size accordingly and be willing to take assignment.

🌱 Entry-Level Investor (Just Getting Started with Options)

What is a block cross? Imagine a real estate broker who already knows a buyer and a seller privately — instead of listing the house on Zillow for everyone to bid, they close the deal directly between the two parties at a pre-agreed price. That is what happened here. Both sides of this trade knew each other (via their brokers), agreed on $29.45, and the deal printed on the exchange for regulatory record. We know it happened; we just don't know which side is the one with the "strong view."

What does "deep in the money" mean? The $220 call gives the holder the right to buy AMZN at $220. Since the stock trades at ≈$239, that right already has ≈$19 of "real" value (called intrinsic value) just from the stock being above the strike. The extra $10.13 is what you pay for time — the possibility AMZN climbs further before September 18. Deep-in-the-money calls behave more like stock ownership (delta ≈0.73) than the out-of-the-money options you see in viral tweets.

What should I do? Nothing rushed. 👀 This trade tells you that institutional-scale money is transacting in AMZN's September $220 calls, at a strike that's seen repeated large-block activity this week. That's worth noting as context. The July 1 open interest data is now in and resolved this: it was a genuine new position (OI rose 10,752 → 14,223), not a handoff. If you want AMZN exposure, consider after July 30 earnings, when the biggest near-term binary clears and you can see how the company actually performed. Buying options before a major earnings report means paying for volatility that may evaporate quickly after the number.

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⚠️ Risk Factors & Honest Limits

What the tape CANNOT prove:

• ❓ Which side holds the directional view: In a block cross, both buyer and seller agreed on price. The buyer of 3,350 calls could be the speculative long — or could be the side hedging a different exposure. The seller could be exiting a winning long call position (a close, not a new short).
• ❓ Off-tape hedging: The buyer may simultaneously hold a short futures overlay, a swap, or another OTC instrument invisible to us. Absence of a stock leg in the equity tape does not prove an unhedged delta-long position.
• ✅ Open vs. close (RESOLVED): The July 1 OPRA OI print confirmed an OPEN — OI rose 10,752 → 14,223 (Δ +3,471 ≈ the 3,400-contract size), so today's block opened new contracts (a genuine new long-call position), not a transfer/partial close. (Direction of the counterparty's net view remains unprovable from the tape, but the open itself is now confirmed.)
• ❓ Counterparty identity and intent: OPRA cannot tell us the broker, fund, or corporate treasurer behind either side. A deep-ITM call purchase is consistent with bullish speculative intent, hedging equity compensation exposure, or unwinding a structured product.

Market and fundamental risks:

• 💸 Capex / FCF execution (primary risk): Amazon committed to ≈$200B in 2026 capex, crushing TTM free cash flow to ≈$1.2B. If AWS AI monetization lags the spending cadence — even by one quarter — the stock de-rates and the time value in the AMZN $220 call deteriorates.
• ⚡ July 30 earnings binary: A miss on AWS growth, a capex increase, or weak Q3 guidance can crack AMZN through the $230–$235 gamma support cluster and threaten the $220 strike. The implied move (±$42.86 through Sep 18) exists because the market respects this risk.
• 🔬 Q1 EPS quality: The $2.78 Q1 EPS print included a $16.8B one-time Anthropic investment gain — a non-recurring item that inflated the headline beat. Q2 EPS will be judged on operating performance only.
• 🚗 Zoox regulatory uncertainty: A paid commercial launch requires an NHTSA exemption with no fixed decision date, per Startup Fortune and The Next Web. Any denial, delay, or safety incident removes that option value from the stock.
• 🤖 AI commerce competition: OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Perplexity are entering agentic shopping, threatening Amazon's highest-margin advertising and retail-search funnel — the exact monetization engine that justifies the capex investment.
• ⚖️ FTC antitrust trial (2027 overhang): The FTC monopolization trial was pushed from October 2026 to March 29, 2027 — removed as a 2026 binary risk, but an ongoing overhang on the marketplace and Prime model. An adverse ruling in 2027 could force structural remedies.

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🎯 The Bottom Line

Here's the deal: A ≈$9.87M QCC block cross printed in AMZN's September $220 calls this morning — the third institutional-scale event at this strike in four trading days. But precision matters here.

What the tape proves (HIGH confidence):

• ✅ 3,350 contracts crossed at $29.45 via a QCC negotiated block cross at 10:23:58 ET
• ✅ No equity-tape stock leg in the ±60-second window — distinguishes this from the June 23 financing-reversal structure
• ✅ The $220 September strike has accumulated substantial institutional OI over the past week (+5,174 from June 29 alone)
• ✅ AMZN is pinned at its dominant $240 gamma support (44.62B GEX) with the strongest gamma ceiling of the chain directly overhead at $250 (47.38B GEX)
• ✅ Q2 2026 earnings on July 30 is the confirmed binary catalyst sitting inside this expiry

What the tape does NOT prove:

• ❌ Whether today's cross is net long or net short from the buyer's perspective
• ❌ Whether the buyer is hedged via off-tape instruments

Now resolved (✅): Whether this is a new opening position or a transfer/partial close — the July 1 OPRA OI print settled it: OI rose 10,752 → 14,223 (Δ +3,471 ≈ the 3,400-contract size), so this was a genuine OPEN.

The June 29 AMZN trade looked significant intraday and resolved as a transfer. Today was different — the next-day OI confirms real building, a genuine new opening long-call position.

Mark your calendar:

• ✅ July 1, 2026 (RESOLVED) — OPRA OI resolved open vs. close at the Sep $220 strike: OI rose 10,752 → 14,223 (Δ +3,471 ≈ the 3,400-contract size) = new OPEN confirmed
• 📅 July 30, 2026 (after close) — Q2 2026 earnings — the pivotal catalyst inside this expiry
• 📅 September 18, 2026 — Quarterly Triple Witch expiry for today's crossed contracts
• 📅 End-2026 — Trainium3 capacity ramp (≈1GW combined) and Zoox commercial launch (NHTSA-dependent), per Anthropic and SemiAnalysis
• 📅 March 29, 2027 — FTC antitrust bench trial, per MLex

Real talk: Repeated institutional size at the AMZN $220 September strike is not noise — three events in four days is a pattern worth watching. But the mechanism (negotiated block cross, known counterparty, no visible stock hedge) still prevent us from calling this a clean directional signal on the counterparty's net view. The July 1 OI print did, however, resolve the open/close question — OI rose 10,752 → 14,223 (Δ +3,471 ≈ size), confirming a genuine new OPEN. And whatever you do, remember that July 30 earnings can move this stock ±$42 over the next 80 days — that is the market's own estimate of the risk embedded in this expiry.

Disclaimer: Options trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. This analysis is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Block crosses involve known counterparties — the directional view of either side cannot be inferred from mechanism or tape alone. The open/close status of this trade has been ✅ resolved by next-day (July 1, 2026) OPRA open interest: OPEN confirmed (OI 10,752 → 14,223, Δ +3,471 ≈ the 3,400-contract size). Past institutional activity does not predict future price direction or profitability. Q2 2026 earnings on July 30 create a binary event risk with potential for significant price movement in either direction. Always conduct your own research, understand your risk tolerance, and consider consulting a licensed financial professional before trading.

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About Amazon.com, Inc.: Amazon operates the world's largest e-commerce marketplace and cloud-computing platform (AWS), with a ≈$2.5 trillion market cap and strategic positions in AI infrastructure (Anthropic partnership), custom AI silicon (Trainium), autonomous vehicles (Zoox), and agentic commerce (Alexa+). Sector: Consumer Discretionary — Internet Retail & Cloud Infrastructure.

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Last updated: 2026-07-01 — open/close RESOLVED via next-day OPRA OI: OPEN confirmed (OI 10,752 → 14,223, Δ +3,471 ≈ size 3,400). Bullish long-call open holds.