Here is a quick recap of 5 of the more interesting options trades this week:
- From Oct 15th: S – Most active lines were the Nov 6 and Feb 6 lines, mainly selling, as the nature of the Softbank offer reduced odds of a big move higher. See this post from the Kid Dynamite blog for an explanation of why. Jan14 options were also active, for more complicated reasons that we might post about in the coming days.
- From Oct 16th: LYB – Someone bought more than 50k of the Nov 57.5 / 60 call spread paying 0.60 and 0.65 between 12 and 1pm. Commentary from GS analysts that ethylene prices could rise further given constrained production capacity. That one spread doubled the open interest in the name.
- From Oct 17th: FXI – The China ETF has been on a tear in the past 2 weeks, rallying 10%. Interesting trade today, as someone sold 20k of the Jan13 34 / 38 strangle at $1.89, and bought 30k of the Jan13 25 puts for $0.05
- From Oct 18th: AAPL – AAPL was one of the few tech names already trading lower when the GOOG earnings news hit the tape midday (VZ’s low iPhone sales caused the stock to gap lower). AAPL ended down 2%, and the Oct 640 and 645 calls were most traded in the morning, while the Oct 630 puts traded the most in the afternoon as the stock fell.
- From Oct 19th: TRIP – Kristen had a good write-up today about the action in the online travel sites. Someone traded the Nov 30 / 27 1×2 put spread, 9k by 18k in TRIP, potentially rolling their long Nov 30 puts down into 2 Nov 27 puts, based on open interest.