1)Yes. I agree. To me it seems like common sense. If you are buying puts, you are buying them for a spec or a hedge, especially in the US where the skew is significantly higher than the rest of the world and historically caries a significant risk premium. There is lots of analysi

2) that basically shows that 90%+of HF ‘alpha’ can be explained by short put exposure. Every quant, prop, and HF I know has some version of the high sharpe/ negative tail trade on with some tail cutting trigger built in. Why wouldn’t you, especially if the Fed has your back.

3/This is mostly anecdotal evidence, but in the absence of empirical evidence, I have been trading these markets as a major player for decades & my ML models definitely see the flow. My view is the market is increasingly a series of leveraged carry trades, Harvesting risk premium