Viking Therapeutics soared 40% - did the options whale know in advance?

$VKTX stock soared 40% - but the truly interesting story actually began yesterday in the options market 🤫

Viking Therapeutics stock surged by about 40% in pre-market trading after the company published exceptionally strong data on VK2735, its drug for the treatment of obesity. 🔼

The data point that ignited the market is not just the weight loss - but the ability to maintain it even when treatment frequency is significantly reduced. ✔️

Patients who received a once-weekly injection and switched to an injection once every two weeks maintained about 97% of the weight loss recorded at the start of treatment for 12 weeks. 🛡

When switching to a once-monthly injection, about 90% of the weight loss was maintained. 🔥

Before the maintenance phase, patients lost about 16% to 19% of their body weight over 21 weeks. 📉

And in a small group that continued to receive 17.5 mg once weekly, the reduction reached about 22% by week 33 - with no clear sign of plateauing. ✅

The safety profile also appeared positive: the company reported gastrointestinal side effects at a level similar to placebo and a low treatment discontinuation rate. 🟢

Next step? Viking plans to also investigate an oral maintenance treatment, while VK2735 is advancing into Phase 3 trials. 📶

So far - excellent news. 📣

But there is a much more interesting question. 👀

Did someone see this coming❓

Yesterday, even before the data release, unusual activity appeared in $VKTX options. 🛰

According to trading data, on September 21, unusual activity was recorded in call options with a strike price of $30 expiring on October 16. 🎯

5,305 contracts were traded compared to only 650 contracts of open interest, with a volume-to-open-interest ratio of 8.16x and classified as a bullish trade. 🐳

A mysterious whale paid a premium of $1.6 million for these options... 🛒

And that's already interesting. 🚨

This involves an expiration in about 3.5 weeks - exactly around the timeframe an investor expecting a significant catalyst would want to be positioned. ⛔

Then morning arrives:

VK2735 delivers strong maintenance data.

The stock surges by about 40%. 🚀

And the bullish options purchased the day before suddenly become a story in themselves.

People see a headline about a stock soaring 40%, but they don't understand that the most interesting part isn't that the stock soared today. ❌

The interesting part is that someone was willing to pay hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars for bullish exposure just before the story exploded. 🤫

If it was simply speculation - it was speculation with almost cinematic timing. 🎬

If the trades were based on information not accessible to the public - that's an entirely different question...

Meanwhile, one thing is clear: the whale entered the water just before the sea began to boil. 🐳