No major theme in options volumes yesterday. Earnings season is nearly over, which has led to lower single stock options volumes in the past week.
1. CMCSA – Comcast shares have bounced back rapidly in the past 3 days after touching $52 support. I discussed the bull case for CMCSA in a CotD post on Monday. The Jan15 57.5 / 60 call spread traded 50k x 70k in the afternoon, with the Jan15 57.5 calls trading at 0.60 and the Jan15 60 calls trading for 0.23. CMCSA’s all-time high is $57.49 from mid-September.
2. AMZN – Buyer of 7k of the Jan 2017 300 strike calls for $72 to open when the stock was $
3. RIG – RIG hit a new 10 year low. Buyer of 22k of the Jan15 25 / 20 put spreads for $1.275 to open in the afternoon. RIG’s 5 year CDS has moved from around 200 in mid-September to around 425 as of yesterday, reflecting the increasing concerns of bondholders in RIG as oil prices continue to decline.
4. SLV – Buyer of over 30k of the Apr 18 calls for 0.27 in the morning. $18 was prior multi-year support in SLV before the metal broke down to new lows in September.
5. JCP – The stock declined 8.5% on heavy volume yesterday after it missed sales forecasts. Options were active, with the Nov22nd puts trading over 20k and the Jan15 5 puts trading over 14k on the session.
6. TTWO – Buyer of 15k of the Mar 20 puts for 0.45 to close. Those puts were originally sold as part of a bullish Mar 20 / 24 risk reversal trade on September 9th. TTWo is up 48% year-to-date, and is within 20% of its all-time high of $29.60 from June 2005.