Wednesday’s Notable Options Activity: $CSX, $FB, $GOOG, $MCD

by Dan April 23, 2015 8:04 am • Commentary

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

1. CSX – continues to see bullish options flow, when the stock was $36.15 a trader sold to open 8,000 May 33 puts at .33 and bought 8,000 of the May 36/39 call spreads for 1.00.  Earlier this week we detailed call buying and rolls here.

2. MCD – stock closed off of its intra-day highs after posting results that were not as bad as expected. On the heals of the strength in the stock options volume was 6x avg daily volume, with calls outnumbering puts nearly 2.5 to 1.  When the stock was 97.50 a trader paid .90 for 10,000 of the May 100/105 call spreads.

3. GOOG – call volume in the Class C shares was 3x that of puts. In front of tonight’s earnings there was an opening call buyer in both May and June.  When the stock was trading $538 there was a buyer of out of the money calls in May and June.  A buyer paid 3.70 for 1800 of the May 575 calls to open and paid 5.10 for 1800 of the June 585 calls.  While the contract sizes are not huge, the premium is fairly meaty given how far out of the money both call strikes are.For May, the trade cost $666,000 in premium and breaks even at $578.70 on May expiration, up 7%, almost 2x the implied move.  As for the June, the trade cost a little more than $1 million and breaks-even at $590.70, up about 10%

4. FB – options volume ran almost 2.5x average daily volume with calls outnumbering puts 1.8x to 1 in front of their highly anticipated Q1 results as the stock trades within a couple percent of its all time highs.  Nine of the top 10 most active strikes were calls, with the 19,000 of the April 24th 85 calls, 16,000 April 24th 90 calls, 13,000 April 84 calls and 12,000 May 85 calls trading.  The options market was implying about a 5.5% one day move after earnings.

5. EWJ – It looks like a trader(s) was rolling very large call positions in the Japan ETF. 55,000 of the June/January 13 call spreads were bought for 0.31 (the June calls were sold and the Jan calls were bought). There was also 100,000 of the Dec 15 calls sold at 0.12 while 35,000 of the Sept 14 calls were bought for 0.23. 257,000 calls traded on the day versus an average daily volume of around 14,000. Just 1500 puts traded on the day versus and average daily volume of 3,000.