Traders are treating this legacy tech giant like the next ‘meme’ stock

Options traders may have found a new tech favorite ahead of this week’s earnings: the legacy networking giant CiscoIt’s a stock that’s been moving into software and cloud-based AI technology for years and is now soaring into the Wednesday report.

Shares are up 15% in the past month and options bulls are piling in; More than 75,000 puts were traded compared to 16,000 puts on Friday central time. The number of calls traded at or above the sell level is more than double the number of puts, meaning investors are buying upside risk.

Shares rose during a difficult period on Monday.

The bulk of the trading was in near-the-money call contracts, which rose as the stock moved higher throughout the Friday session; The 100-strike call is the most popular contract by volume, expiring on May 15, and the 95-strike call expires the same day and is traded at the most premium.

Perhaps most notable is that implied volatility (the price of call options on Cisco) has skyrocketed amid the trading glut. Implied volatility on Friday hit 47, the highest level in more than a year, and was on par with the semiconductor index, a sector where stocks have gone parabolic.

Rising call premiums, as well as stock prices, have become the key defining feature of momentum stocks, attracting the attention of retail traders willing to place expensive bets that stocks will rise sharply.

A recent example: legacy chipmaker IntelLess than a year after chatter about irrelevancy, there has been an 88% increase since bullish option flows were set before earnings.