Volume Spike Investor

There has been continued betting today against the US AUTO Sector, in a move that is starting to become as normal as betting against airline stocks.  We have increased PUT OPTION buying today in Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM).
Ford PUT/STRIKE      Volume    OpInt
SEP08 $6.00 PUTS     8,421     37,802
SEP08 $7.00 [...]

Linear Technology Corp. (NASDAQ: LLTC) has just seen a rather large straddle position get taken.  It looks like an investor has made a bet that the stock is going to either rise sharply or fall sharply by Thanksgiving.  Here are the trades seen that signaled the alert, and we included the open interest before to [...]

JA Solar Holdings Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ: JASO) rarely makes the list of unusual trading stocks, but today is even more notable as the stock is making the list of today’s most active stock options contracts traded.
Option/Strike               Volume  OpInt
AUG08 $20.00 CALLS    3,039    539
So the open interest will have just increased by a significant move.  3,000 [...]

Myriad Genetics (NASDAQ: MYGN) is seeing strong selling pressure in the pre-market hours this Monday. The culprit is that plans to discontinue the development of Alzheimer treatment Flurizan after its late-stage trial failed to meet endpoints.
The stock has recovered off of its lows as shares had briefly been down more than 10%.  Shares are currently [...]

Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ: LVLT) is likely to see some added selling pressure on Monday morning.  The culprit is a downgrade out of Citigroup, but the severity of the call may turn some heads.  Level 3 was already covered with a HOLD rating, but the new call is a SELL rating from the brokerage firm.  [...]

There has been a pick up in trading activity of general Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) this afternoon via the put and call and options.
The JULY08 $15.00 CALL and $15.00 PUT strikes have seen a sudden pick up:
$15.00 CALLS saw    14,095 contracts trade and the open interest was 28,681 before today.
$15.00 PUTS saw 14,162 contracts trade [...]

There has been what sort of looks or feels like a concerted early-afternoon selling surge in shares of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).  What is interesting about this selling surge is that JPMorgan is THE best of the best banks right now.  This had been positive all morning but the selling picked up right after Noon [...]

National City Corporation (NYSE: NCC) has not gone without its shares of trouble since the financial meltdown started.
OCT08 $4.00 PUTS have seen some 27,079 contracts trade over the last 45 minutes.  Its prior open interest was a mere 6,220 contracts.  As a reminder, 27,000 contracts equals 2.7 million on a fully leveraged basis.  This was [...]

International Game Technology (NYSE: IGT) has already seen more than its average daily volume trade in the first hour of trading today.  This stock is down a sharp 8.3% at $25.03 at 10:52 AM EST on more than 5.2 million shares. The culprit is a Morgan Stanley downgrade where the cut was from Overweight [...]

Evergreen Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: ESLR) has made its way on to the pre-market or after-hours most actives several times now.  The company has priced its secondary, so today’s increased trading activity is easy to assume.  At 9:05 AM EST the stock has already seen 1.44 million shares trade, making it the most active of pre-market [...]