Production of Nikola's Tre BEV semi-trucks began on March 21 in Arizona
Nikola Corp (NASDAQ:NKLA) is surging today, last seen up 13.7% to trade at $10.39. Today's massive bull gap came after the electric truck maker announced the production of its Tre BEV semi-trucks for North America began on March 21 at its manufacturing facility in Arizona, as planned. The company added the production of trucks for the European market will start in June 2023 at its facility in Germany.
The security broke through overhead pressure at the 80-day moving average earlier this week, after staging a bounce off the $6.50 level, which had been providing a floor for the shares. Now trading at its highest level since early January, NKLA is chipping away at its 7.4% year-to-date deficit.
Though short sellers are already hitting the exits, there is still plenty of pessimism left to unwind. Short interest fell 4.8% over the last two reporting periods, yet the 67.31 million shares sold short make up a whopping 29.7% of the stock's available float, or roughly four days' worth of pent-up buying power.
Options traders are already blasting NKLA. In just the first half hour of trading, 27,000 calls and 7,194 puts have exchanged hands, which is 14 times the intraday average. Most popular is the 3/25 11-strike call, followed by the 10.50-call in that series, with positions being opened at both.
A sentiment shift in the options pits could provide additional tailwinds for Nikola stock. This is per the security's Schaeffer's put/call options ratio (SOIR) of 1.38, which stands higher than 79% of readings from the past year. This means these traders have been quite put-biased of late.