Options Flow Summary and Unusual Activity Alert: General Sentiment, Intel Corporation (INTC), & Microvision Inc (MVIS)
General Sentiment
Dollar weakness is giving a lift to oil and gold while stocks are suffering today. The Dow Industrials are down more than $200 before a mid-afternoon ëdead-catí bounce. The CBOE VIX is up .68 to 23.18 as traders brace for ongoing volatility in the new year.
Option volume is on pace to beat 12 million contracts today, with nearly equal amounts of puts and calls trading. Premium buyers lead the flow with a focus on out-of-the money strikes across a number of industry groups.
Intel Corporation INTC
Intel options have traded more than twice their normal volume today, with 142,000 contracts changing hands as the stock (along with the entire semiconductor sector) takes a beating.
Intel is currently down 5.25% to $25.26 and the focus of the activity is the Jan 25 put where more than 35,000 contracts have traded. This includes a number of multi-market sweep orders paying from $.39 to $.47 for several thousand contracts.
Microvision Inc MVIS
We are seeing unusual one-sided order flow in this tech imaging hardware stock today. While average volume is just 335 contracts, today weíve seen 10 times that amount trading, with all of the volume in the calls. ISE sentiment data confirms that much of the flow appears to be an opening customer.
The stock price is up nearly $.30 to $4.18. Buyers seem to be targeting the March 5 strike calls, with 2,375 on the tape and implied volatility lifting from 65% to nearly 80%.
Posted By: Trade Alert
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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.
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