The CBOE Put/Call Ratio closed at 0.69, its lowest level of the past month. Call activity was concentrated in many of the momentum stocks and sectors, which exhibited outperformance on Monday.
1. TSLA – Options volume was around 3x the 1 month average. Call buyers were focused on the weekly options, as the weekly 220 calls traded over 20k on the day. The most active strikes outside of the weeklies were the Jul19th 210 and 220 calls, which both traded over 3k on the session. TSLA traded its highest volume on its 8%+ move higher yesterday since earnings in early May. 30 day implied volatility bounced from near a 2 year low.
2. LEA – Seller of 50k of the weekly 90 calls at 1.30 to close in the afternoon. This lot of 50k was bought in late January for around $0.75-$1.00. LEA recently hit an all-time high of $92 on June 12th.
3. SUNE – Solar sector had a strong day, as Dan detailed in yesterday’s NTT post. He outlined the SUNE call options activity:
The largest trade today is a very bullish roll where a trader sold 32,000 July 20 calls @ 2.0875 to close and bought 45k July 22 calls for 1.18 to open. This activity has been fairly prominent in this stock for months now where a large investor has been rolling up calls as the stock hits his strike.
SUNE’s high for the year is $21.93 from early March.
4. WMB – Williams rose to a new all-time high, up 19% on the day, after WMB agreed to buy control of Access Midstream and look to increase its share of the U.S. energy infrastructure market. WMB had seen active call buying volume over the last couple of months, and it was payday for many options buyers on the big move. Surprisingly, the only real seller was someone getting out of the Jan15 50 calls around 7.30 midday. That line traded over 12k by the end of the session. There is over 500k of open interest in WMB calls (vs. only about 115k in the puts).
5. FIO – Stock closed higher by 22% after SanDisk announced a bid of $11.25/share in cash for the company. The Jul19th 12 calls were the most active line, trading over 20k at an average price of 0.16, as some options traders were speculating about a potential higher bid for FIO. However, implied volatility moved significantly lower (from around 45 to 15), indicating that most traders don’t expect a better bid than that of SanDisk.
6. FXI – Seller of 50k of the Sept 35.50 puts at 0.73 midday. FXI has rallied 15% since its mid-March lows, and is nearly unchanged on the year ($38.37 is the unchanged mark). FXI has traded between $30 and $40 for much of the past 3 years.