Monday’s Notable Options Activity: $ATML, $C, $CAT, $COH, $OAS

by Dan January 27, 2015 7:18 am • Commentary

Here is some untied, generally directional options activity that caught my eye during Monday’s trading:

1. C – saw some way out of the money call buying in the morning when stock was 48.52, a trader paid .12 for 10,000 Feb 53 calls to open

2. CAT – saw heavy put volume, 3x that of calls, with total volume nearly 2x avg daily. When the stock was 86 there was a buyer of 6800 Jan 30th 83 puts, 10,000 have traded on the day in front of tuesday morning’s earnings report.  The options market was implying about a 3.5% one day move vs the 4 qtr avg of about 4.5%.  Just before the close, when the stock was 85.85 a trader sold to close 2860 May 92.50 puts at 8.70 to close and bought to open 6,000 March 82,50 puts for 2.075

3. COH – a theme in front of this morning’s earnings was call selling and put buying. There were two trades that caught my eye: When the stock was 37.29 a trader sold 12,300 May 37 calls at 2.45 to close. And  when stock was 37.12 a trader paid 1.10 for 4,000 of the Feb 37 / 40 risk reversal, buying put and selling call, this could be a collar against 400,000 shares of stock.  The implied move in the options market was about 6%, a tad shy of the 4 qtr avg of about 6.5%.

4. OAS –  Shares of the E&P company are down 20% on the year and 76% since August.  When the stock was $13.40 there was an opening seller of 24,000 May 10 puts in blocks between .85 and .80.

5. ATML – there was a large block of calls bought, tied to stock that caught my eye for one because options generally trade by appointment in this $3.5 billion market cap Semiconductor company.  When the stock was 8.55 a trader paid .35 for 9,000 Mat 10 calls to open and sold 270,000 shares.  This block of calls makes up half of the entire open interest in the options of the stock.  Weird that this block traded with stock as normally stock replacement trades usually command a closer to the money higher delta option.