After Trump suspended tariffs, the price of call options rose 9 times

Trump announced on social media at 1:18 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday that he would temporarily suspend tariffs on certain countries, causing the S&P 500 index to surge by 9.5%.

Market data shows that before this, trading activity for some options contracts had surged. For example, according to Trade Alert data, when the share price of SPY (an ETF tracking the S&P 500 index) was around $501.50, about 5,105 SPY call options (buying rights/betting that the stock price will rise above $502) were traded around 1:00 PM Eastern Time at an average price of $4.20. The stock market soared in the afternoon and these call option prices rose to about $42 at their highest point. On paper, if all of these 5,105 call options were held onto their value would have increased from approximately $2.14 million to approximately $21.44 million.