In looking at the options activity this morning, I see a huge number of April 20th $65 strike puts changing hands. Any of you sharpsters know if these were near the bid or near the ask ?
Does this indicate a nervous short buying insurance ?
The open interest is 3,676 at this point. Tomorrow we'll see if anyone was closing out a position . . .
'jft310' pid='19638' datel Wrote:Fidelity states trade was placed at $3.50 in the middle of the Bid and Ask. There desk sees this as a stop. They GUESS buying back protection.That requires selling the long put position.Never know for sure. Others may know more
Interesting also , the deep in the money April calls trading day before yesterday (9,000) do not show up in open interest., things seem to be going on here...fwiw
'trans' pid='19640' datel Wrote:
'jft310' pid='19638' datel Wrote:Fidelity states trade was placed at $3.50 in the middle of the Bid and Ask. There desk sees this as a stop. They GUESS buying back protection.That requires selling the long put position.Never know for sure. Others may know more
Interesting also , the deep in the money April calls trading day before yesterday (9,000) do not show up in open interest., things seem to be going on here...fwiw
I guess short calls were closed out or Bought!
Yesterday at 15:07 PM, volume jumped 205k shares in a stock option trade derivatively priced at $75.45. It looked like a buy of the Apr $60 calls, which was then converted to stock. In total, 1055 Apr$60 calls (Delta 0.98) were traded, but Open Interest remained the same for the day. Incidentally, 1090 Apr$60 puts (Delta -0.16) were traded, with Open Interest up just 14 contracts for the day. The transaction was visible in the total volume count, but not on the intra-day stock chart, which only showed a 3500 unit order executed at $75.22. Maybe the source of the shares was a dark pool because the stock transaction didn't show up in the print. There was a similar options transaction in the Apr $90 series yesterday, involving 2183 call contracts and 2141 put contracts. If this is one and the same party, it has hedged its position to (almost) delta neutral. But, then, we should have seen an instantaneous volume spike of about 650.000 shares, both printed and without moving the stock price, right? According to my CBOE paper platform, this would be a synethetic construction, with break even at $72.83 and a <50% probability for any profit. Max profit: >$23.5 million. Max loss: Infinite... May IOC prove the short side dead wrong!
'Petrovale' pid='19678' datel Wrote:Yesterday at 15:07 PM, volume jumped 205k shares in a stock option trade derivatively priced at $75.45. It looked like a buy of the Apr $60 calls, which was then converted to stock. In total, 1055 Apr$60 calls (Delta 0.98) were traded, but Open Interest remained the same for the day. Incidentally, 1090 Apr$60 puts (Delta -0.16) were traded, with Open Interest up just 14 contracts for the day. The transaction was visible in the total volume count, but not on the intra-day stock chart, which only showed a 3500 unit order executed at $75.22. Maybe the source of the shares was a dark pool because the stock transaction didn't show up in the print. There was a similar options transaction in the Apr $90 series yesterday, involving 2183 call contracts and 2141 put contracts. If this is one and the same party, it has hedged its position to (almost) delta neutral. But, then, we should have seen an instantaneous volume spike of about 650.000 shares, both printed and without moving the stock price, right? According to my CBOE paper platform, this would be a synethetic construction, with break even at $72.83 and a <50% probability for any profit. Max profit: >$23.5 million. Max loss: Infinite... May IOC prove the short side dead wrong!
These trades have been going on for two weeks. People have been doing combo's in huge size because they can't find borrow. They are buying puts and selling calls and paying a huge vig to replicate a short stock position. I'd estimate that these trades have been 50-70% of the option volume recently. The short exposure is way more than what is implied by the reported short interest, imo. There is a group of people that are extremely confident IOC will crack by expiry and are paying enormous carry to express that. We've seen some similar action in June, but not nearly as much as april
'bam' pid='19685' datel Wrote:
'Petrovale' pid='19678' datel Wrote:Yesterday at 15:07 PM, volume jumped 205k shares in a stock option trade derivatively priced at $75.45. It looked like a buy of the Apr $60 calls, which was then converted to stock. In total, 1055 Apr$60 calls (Delta 0.98) were traded, but Open Interest remained the same for the day. Incidentally, 1090 Apr$60 puts (Delta -0.16) were traded, with Open Interest up just 14 contracts for the day. The transaction was visible in the total volume count, but not on the intra-day stock chart, which only showed a 3500 unit order executed at $75.22. Maybe the source of the shares was a dark pool because the stock transaction didn't show up in the print. There was a similar options transaction in the Apr $90 series yesterday, involving 2183 call contracts and 2141 put contracts. If this is one and the same party, it has hedged its position to (almost) delta neutral. But, then, we should have seen an instantaneous volume spike of about 650.000 shares, both printed and without moving the stock price, right? According to my CBOE paper platform, this would be a synethetic construction, with break even at $72.83 and a <50% probability for any profit. Max profit: >$23.5 million. Max loss: Infinite... May IOC prove the short side dead wrong!
These trades have been going on for two weeks. People have been doing combo's in huge size because they can't find borrow. They are buying puts and selling calls and paying a huge vig to replicate a short stock position. I'd estimate that these trades have been 50-70% of the option volume recently. The short exposure is way more than what is implied by the reported short interest, imo. There is a group of people that are extremely confident IOC will crack by expiry and are paying enormous carry to express that. We've seen some similar action in June, but not nearly as much as april
Well, let them short 20M..