ANET — Sep 195/215 call spread
Arista closed the week up 3.6% while the DC supply-chain basket fell 3.4%, one of only three non-hyperscaler names in the index that finished green. IV rank is 12.5, near the bottom of its 52-week range, so the 195/215 call spread costs 6.36 against 20 points of width and breaks even at 201.36, well inside the 8.4% move the chain prices. Broadcom's September 2 print and the Goldman Communacopia conference on September 8 both set the AI back-end fabric read before this expiry.
- Ticker: ANET
- Direction: Bullish
- Risk profile: directional
- Confidence: medium
- Catalyst: Broadcom Q3 earnings read-through, then Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology (Sep 8-11) (2026-09-02)
- Cohort: 2026-08-30
- Expires: 2026-09-06
- Max loss: $6.36
- Max gain: $13.64
Structure
- long call 195 2026-09-18
- short call 215 2026-09-18
Signals
- Week return vs basket: +3.57% vs supply-chain basket -3.44% (DB)
- IV rank (52w percentile): 12.5, expected move 8.4% (DB)
- Networking sector 1Y return: +213.4% avg across 7 tracked names (DB)
- Tracked hyperscaler projects: OpenAI 3,895 MW, Meta 3,372 MW, Microsoft 1,000 MW (DB)
What invalidates this thesis
Broadcom using the September 2 call to claim custom-ASIC share in back-end switching would reset Arista's Ethernet narrative, and anything below 195 at expiry leaves the 6.36 debit worthless.