Volume Spike Investor

NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NRG) saw unusual options activity today.  In fact, it led the CBOE as the most active Call option series.  We saw some 30,000 of the SEP08 $45 CALLS trade hands.  On a fully leveraged basis that represents some 3 million shares.  The stock closed down 0.2% at $42.97 on 4.162 million shares.  Its average trading volume is 3.5 million shares in a day.

It is hard to know if this is a raw or new trade or if it somehow ties into the rejected bid of $9.6 Billion from Calpine (NYSE: CPN) where NRG wanted to acquire the company. We did not see any similar activity at all in Calpine stock or options.

Here are the contracts that traded so much today:

OPTION STRIKE            Volume   OpInt
SEP08 $37.50 CALLS     5,000     52,280
SEP08 $45.00 CALLS    30,000    32,285

Jon Ogg
June 23, 2008