Too Many Options: Light Day, $AAPL weeklies dominate

by Kristen November 28, 2012 4:59 pm • Commentary

On a day when stock volume was above average, options volumes were actually relatively light.  Single stock volumes were dominated by AAPL weekly options.

  1. AAPL – 6 of the top 10 most traded options lines today were AAPL weeklies.  The call to put ratio was 1.35, and the Nov 575 puts and Nov 580 calls were the most traded lines.
  2. F – I got out of my call spread in Feb today, but the largest volume traded in Jan13.  The Jan13 11 and 12.5 calls both traded more than 20k by the close, mostly buying.  The Dec/Mar 10 call calendar also traded 14,500 times.
  3. GMCR – Someone traded out of their long Dec 30 / 33 call spread that was initiated last week for a hefty one week gain.  Sold 24k of the spread to close at 2.20 on the stock’s bounce today.
  4. GLD – Trader taking advantage of the morning weakness in GLD to buy 7,250 of the Jan14 200 / 220 call spread for $1.975.
  5. VXX – Interesting trade in the VIX ETF this morning.  The Jan14 15 / 10 1×2 put spread traded 10k x 20k at $0.58.
  6. PG – Big trade for a normally boring name, as someone bought 27k of the Jul 72.5 calls for 1.51 in the afternoon.  That’s almost $4 million of premium spent.
  7. GLW – Corning has had a strong week after getting beaten down in the past month.  There was a buyer of 20k of the Jan14 20 calls today, paying 0.13.  GLW last traded at $20 in the spring of 2011.
  8. TLM – More than 20k of the Apr 9 puts traded at 0.34 in the last 30 minutes of trading, one large buyer.
  9. SVU – Someone rolled their calls from Dec to Jan13, buying the Dec / Jan13 3 call calendar 30k time for 0.125.  Stock is down 65% year-to-date.
  10. RIMM – another exciting day with 200K+ options trading. The Feb 10 puts traded 5000 times. It looked initially like a spread with the Jan’13 10’s but that side was cancelled. The Mar 11 straddle looks like it was sold 2500 times. The Mar 17/18 call spread traded 2000 times looks like it was bought. The Dec 14 calls and puts traded possibly selling the straddle. And the Mar 10 straddle was sold 1000 times. IV30 was up almost another 4 points today. Stock had quite a range today, initially falling to $10.20 on news that Nokia had won a lawsuit against them and then rising up to 11.25. Earnings are expected Dec 20th.

Chart courtesy of Livevol.