Here is some generally directional, untied options activity that caught my eye during Monday’s trading:
1. AAL – about an hour before the close a trader paid $4.55 for 30,000 Jan 40 calls and sold 3.3 million shares at $40. This trade done one up vs stock, with the options clearly opening a new position could be stock replacement. I would also add that $40 seems to be a fairly important near term support level, and if the trader was replacing stock, they have now stopped themselves down at $35.45:
2. XLU – shortly after the open, when the utilities etf was trading at $42, a trader sold to close 38,750 of the Sept 42 puts at $1.36. $42 is a fairly important technical level:
On Friday’s Options Action on CNBC my friends Carter Worth and Mike Khouw made a bullish call on the XLU that I agreed with from both the technical take and the way to play with options:
3. SPY – the S&P 500 had its worst day of 2015, closing down 2%. Options on the SPY traded 2x average daily with puts outnumbering calls 2 to 1. The top 10 most active strikes were all short dated puts, with the two most actives, 142,000 of the June 30th quarterly (tomo expiration) 207 puts and 122,000 of the June 30th quarterly (tomo expiration) 205 puts.
The S&P 500 in SPY terms stopped right where you would have expected it to, on its 200 day moving average at 205:
Short dated options prices exploded with 30 day the money implied vol closing at the highs of 2015:
