Volume Spike Investor

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 show the level of interest hasn’t been there before this:

OPTION/STRIKE              Volume  OpInt
NOV08 $32.50 CALLS    10,130    737
NOV08 $32.50 PUTS      10,000    3,755

Linear Tech rarely makes the unusual or most active list in stocks.  It never does in options.  More interesting than even the raw trade is the November month expiration.  This could possibly be a capped option or share trade entered on behalf of an insider with a lock-up, or it could be something else entirely.

The stock itself as of 11:44 AM EST has seen a 1.3% rise today to $32.84 on only 1.7 million shares.  That is well under an average daily volume of 6.1+ million shares.  The 52-week trading range is $25.90 to $38.41.

This is now the largest options trade of the day.

Jon C. Ogg
June 30, 2008