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Midday Unusual Options Activity Update - ABK, CLX, LINTA, TIE, ATVI, JDSU, CROX, CVS, NVDA, SBUX, CHK, ALU, XLV

Implied Volatility Movers

Ambac Financial (ABK) implied volatility is elevated after two days of active trading. The action was evenly split between puts and calls yesterday, with 9500 contracts traded. Puts are the most actives today. 1850 traded, which is 6X the normal activity. In addition, data from WhatsTrading.com indicate that 88 percent of those puts traded ask-side of the bid-ask spread. Premium buying in ABK has implied volatility moving up to 195, from about 166 before the activity started Tuesday.

Implied volatility is also higher in Clorox (CLX), Liberty Media (LINTA), and Titanium Metals (TIE). Meanwhile, implied volatility is lower in Activion Blizzard (ATVI), JDS Uniphase (JDSU), and Crocs (CROX).

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Unusual Volume

CVS Caremark (CVS) options volume is running 2X the usual. 59,000 contracts traded and call volume accounts for 54 percent of today's volume.

Options activity in NVidia (NVDA) rose to 2X the usual, with 20,000 traded and call volume representing about 63 percent of the activity.

Starbuck's (SBUX) options activity is running 2X the usual. 36,000 contracts traded and call volume accounting for about 60 percent of the activity.

Increasing volume was also seen in Checkpoint Software (CHK), Alcatel Lucent (ALU), and the SPDR Healthcare ETF (XLV).

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