U.S. stock futures are trading mixed this morning. The scandals facing the Donald Trump administration and a tightening monetary policy from the Federal Reserve are shaking things up this morning.

In the release of the latest Fed meeting minutes yesterday, the central bank made no changes to its monetary policy. What’s more, there was across the board support for another interest rate hike next month. Wall Street expects to hear more from the Fed after Chairman Jerome Powell gives a speech at the Fed’s annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Against this rocky backdrop, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 futures are trading around even. Nasdaq-100 futures are off 0.08%.

In the options pits, volume evaporated once again mid-week. Only about 15.3 million calls and 12.5 million puts changed hands yesterday, putting in the lowest volume session in months. Over on the CBOE, the single-session equity put/call volume ratio rose to 0.90. The 10-day moving average held at 0.63.

Those options traders that decided to participated yesterday centered their focus on tech stocks. Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) was a bullish favorite ahead of this morning’s quarterly earnings report. Meanwhile, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) traders were busy after Citron called for a 20% drop in NVDA stock. Finally, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) saw some rather unusual activity at strikes some 30% north of yesterday’s close.

Let’s take a closer look:

Alibaba (BABA)

BABA stock is trading nearly 4% higher in premarket activity this morning. Earlier, Alibaba reported a 61% spike in first-quarter revenue, extending a strong string of mid-double-digit-percentage sales growth. Elsewhere, mobile growth remained exceptionally strong, with mobile monthly active users (MAUs) on China retail marketplaces rose to 634 million in June from 617 million in March.

“The exceptional growth across our major segments of core commerce, cloud computing and digital media and entertainment validates our strategy of investing in customer experience, product, technology and infrastructure for the future,” said Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu.

Heading into the event, BABA call options were popular in Wednesday’s session. Volume topped 520,000 contracts, with calls gobbling up 66% of the day’s take. As for weekly Aug 24 options, peak call OI at $180 is set to open in the money. The next most popular strike, the $190 call might fall short of a profit if follow-through buying doesn’t kick in tomorrow.

Finally, if you jumped into the BABA Aug 31 $180/$185 bull call spread I recommended a week ago, you’re sitting quite nicely this morning. The maximum potential return on that trade was near 190%, with the options expiring next week. Don’t be afraid to go ahead and take some profits today if BABA trades above $185.

Nvidia (NVDA)

Citron Research is at it again with NVDA stock. The short-side research firm said that NVDA stock would fall 20% by April 2019, and gave 10 reasons supporting it’s projection. However, the bearish note arrived just after Nvidia unveiled its new line of Turing gaming graphics cards. NVDA stock traders sided with the company, as the shares rallied 3.75% yesterday.

NVDA options traders also took the bulls’ side. Volume rose to 310,000 contracts yesterday, more than doubling the stock’s daily average. Calls claimed 63% of the day’s take. That said, options traders remain somewhat cautious of NVDA stock.

Specifically, the September put/call open interest ratio comes in at 0.85 — a little on the high side compared the the past year’s worth of readings. With NVDA trading near all-time highs, this skepticism is expected and could be healthy if it remains moderate.

Qualcomm (QCOM)

There was a distinct lack of news regarding QCOM stock yesterday. Other than the stock benefitting from a rise in the semiconductor sector, there was nothing out of the ordinary for the shares. That is, until you looked at yesterday options activity.

Overall, about 198,000 contracts traded on QCOM, more than tripling the stock’s daily average options volume. Activity was split largely down the middle between puts and calls. Taking a closer look at Trade-Alert.com reveals some rather unusual activity.

Blocks of 24,000 contracts traded on both the Aug 31 $90 put and $90 call strikes. The $90 strike is currently more than 30% above QCOM’s trading range near $67. More details indicate that the $90 puts were sold to close and that the $90 calls were brought to close. In other words, this could have been the closure of an in-the-money synthetic short position.

As of this writing, Joseph Hargett did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.