Pedestrians walk outside Salesforce Tower on Feb. 25, 2026 in San Francisco, California.Benjamin Fanjoy | Getty ImagesCould the software's long national nightmare be over?As semiconductor shares dragged down the Nasdaq-100 for a second day, quietly, software stocks appear to have found their groove.Shares of the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) climbed more than 1% Monday, adding to a more-than 20% advance off April lows and trading at the highest since January. For many, that's enough to call it a bull market.Options traders are leaning into it, selling almost 28,000 puts on the ETF in Monday's session, a bullish position that reflects a view that the worst is past. The number of calls bought also outnumbered the number of puts bought. When traders sell a put, they are making a moderately bullish bet. They are obligated to buy the underlying stock at that put's strike price in exchange for the collected premium.Stock Chart IconStock chart iconiShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV), YTDBut traders are making more outright bullish plays.In one of the biggest options trades of the day, a trader spent $32 million buying 7,000 of the in-the-money 390-strike Microsoft calls expiring Aug. 21. Eight of the top 10 options trades in that stock were call-buyers.Helping invigorate optimism Monday was a report from Bank of America analyst Tal Liani who reinstated coverage of ServiceNow with a buy rating and $130 price target. Shares popped 9% and options traders pounced, scooping up more than 85,000 calls in the stock and trading five times more calls than puts.Even beleaguered Salesforce, which the BofA team labeled "underperformed" managed a 3.5% bounce and saw calls outpace puts three-to-one.While much of the category is still trading well off last year's highs, there's at least one categorical exception: cybersecurity. Amplify's cybersecurity ETF "HACK" is up 16% since April 20, including a 3% rally Monday, as stocks like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks trade at all-time highs.Software stocks have been crushed in 2026 on fears of a so-called SaaSpocalypse, or the fear that AI agents will replace software companies. Even with the recent rally, the IGV is down 12% on the year.