Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are in focus to start the holiday-shortened trading week. Both tech companies trotted out AI models over the weekend to considerable buzz.
BABA is up 4.7% to trade at $160.08, after its AI chatbot Qwen garnered 10 million downloads in the first week. Alibaba stock is now 90% higher in 2025, and its 10% quarterly drawdown has found support at its 80-day moving average.
GOOGL is up 5.5% to trade at $315.55, after the company's latest AI model Gemini 3 received upbeat reviews after its rollout last week. Alphabet stock hit a record high of $318.57 out of the gate, and is now 67% higher year to date.
Short-term options traders have been seeing puts grow in popularity. Both BABA and GOOGL's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratios (SOIR) of 0.95 and 0.77 sit in the 100th and 74th percentile of their respective annual ranges.
Options stocks are sure to be popular amid a post-earnings volatility crush. Their respective Schaeffer's Volatility Indexes (SVI) rank in the 26th and 32nd percentile of their annual range. Plus, with Schaeffer's Volatility Scorecards (SVS) at 86 and 80 , both stocks have a history of exceeding option trader's volatility expectations during the past year.
