Mid-day Flow Summary: GLW & ALVR

Corning Inc (GLW)
There was interesting optionflow in GLW today. An aggressive buyer lifted nearly 12,000 Aug 25 puts for$1.05 this morning across multiple floors. Later in the day , 11,000 more were traded for $1 on the Amex. This was part of astraddle sold by a client with the stock at the same level. That made a total ofnearly 23,000 contracts on the day.

With realized implied volatility in GLW near 22% for the past 60days, the buyer may have been positioning for some motion around earnings onJuly 25.  The later straddle sellerseems to have the exact opposite view, believing the option implied vols in the32% range are overbid versus future price movement.  The market-makers involved in both trades made out the best, keepingthe nickel on the trade 11,000 times ($55,000) with little movement in theunderlying hedge.

The wireless internetfirm Alvarion is seeing unusual and highly one-sided option activity today. Buyers were snapping up calls in this thinly traded name. The stock is trading up $.51 to $9.29. In addition nearly 10,000 10 strikecalls in June thru Jan 08 have traded.  The average daily volume is just 395contracts. 

About Henry Schwartz

Henry Schwartz has traded derivatives on US and European exchanges for nearly 20 years. His experience includes market-making and institutional trading at the Hull Group, Salomon Brothers, Bear Stearns and most recently Banc of America Securities, where he led the electronic market-making project coincident with the launch of the ISE. His current work involves real-time stream analysis of options market activity for a number of leading institutional sell-side firms.