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(Bloomberg) -- Traders who picked up cheap VIX call options last week are getting some protection from Monday’s global tech selloff that erased more than $400 billion in market value from Nvidia Corp. alone.

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Demand for calls on the Cboe Volatility Index, also known as the VIX, surged last week as traders bought more than 200,000 lots combined of February 22 and 23 calls, after the index sank below 15 to the lowest in a month. The call buying drove the skew, or the premium of calls betting on an increase in the VIX over puts, close to a record high, according to Cboe Global Markets.

The VIX — known colloquially as Wall Street’s fear gauge — jumped to above 22 early Monday as traders snapped up S&P 500 options to protect against a further selloff with markets upended by concerns that DeepSeek is a direct threat to America’s AI pre-eminence. The market last week had shrugged off President Donald Trump’s comments on everything from tariffs to oil prices, as well as the Federal Reserve’s upcoming interest rate decision on Wednesday. Meanwhile, options traders were pricing in relatively small moves in technology giants due to report earnings.

“We had seen a fair amount of VIX call buying last week, but it was just because volatility had gotten low,” said Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna International Group. “So there was a part of the market that was just opportunistically taking advantage of the low volatility to buy VIX calls.”

The broad market rout is bringing in some bottom-feeding early Monday, with some traders selling puts, betting that the S&P 500 won’t drop much further after falling as much as 2.3% to below 6,000.

“This morning we saw pretty heavy 0DTE put selling at the 5,900 SPX level,” said Brent Kochuba, founder of options platform SpotGamma.

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