Your daily options trading wrap up.

Sentiment

The list of leading economic indicators was a bright spot. It edged up .4 percent in March, and two times more than expected.  Post-earnings gains in a handful of names, including Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and Traveler’s (NYSE: TRV), seems to be helping bolster investor sentiment heading into the three-day weekend as well. With 45 minutes left to trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 27 points. The tech-heavy NASDAQ has added 14. The CBOE Volatility Index (CBOE: VIX) lost another .44 to 14.63. Trading in the options market is running about the typical volume with 7.5 million calls and 6.4 million puts traded so far.

Bullish Flow

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), which gained 4.7% on earnings news yesterday, is down a nickel to $16.83. One options investor sold the YHOO Jul 18 – Oct 16 bullish Risk-Reversal at 47 cents, 9500 times. It was tied to 703,000 shares at $16.79 and appears to be opening. While open interest is sufficient to cover in both contracts, most of the interest in the YHOO Oct 16 Puts is from Monday when 10,000 were sold at $1.45. They’re being sold again today at $1.19.

Baidu.com (NASDAQ: BIDU) is trading down $1.50 to $147.83 and the expiring BIDU Weekly 150 Calls are seeing interest for a second day. 12,615 traded Wednesday. Open interest declined by 577 to 5,208 contracts. The fact that OI fell indicates that some traders were likely opening and closing in the same session and playing the stock with these short-term options. The Apr Weekly 150 Call is now 1.5% out-of-the-money and stops trading today. It was recently bid at 35 cents with a delta of .20. Volume in the first 20 minutes is 1,574 contracts. BIDU is slated to report earnings on the afternoon of April 27, which is after these weekly options expire.

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Bearish Flow

The top equity options trade today is in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE: SPY), which is up 54 cents to $133.64 and, despite some volatility Monday, up 1.2% on the week. In options action, an 81,000-contract block of SPY May 130 Puts was sold at 89 cents. The same investor also bought 30,000 SPY June (Quarterly) 133 Puts at $3.46 and sold 15,000 SPY June (Quarterly) 130 Puts at $1.09. Looks like a possible roll, or swapping out a position in the May 130 puts for a June QTRLY 130 – 133 (1X2) put ratio spread.

Implied Volatility Mover

SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) is up 55 cents to $49 and it looks like one or more investors is accumulating a position in SNDK May 52.5 – 55 Call Spreads ahead of earnings. SanDisk reports after the closing bell. The top trade is 2000 of the May 52.5 – 55 call spreads at 59 cents on International Securities Exchange. 12,500 now traded. Sentiment data and side-of-market suggest bullish vertical spreads are being opened ahead of the profit report. Shares sank 8.8% on Jan. 28 after earnings were last reported. Implied volatility is up 6% to 42.

Options Flow

Bullish flow detected in Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI), with 26,424 calls trading, or three times its recent average daily call volume.

Bullish flow detected in XL Company (NYSE: XL), with 9957 calls trading, or three times its recent average daily call volume.

Bullish flow detected in Avanir Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AVNR), with 10,326 calls trading, or three times its recent average daily call volume.

Increasing volume is also being seen in Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), and GE (NYSE: GE).

Frederic Ruffy is the Senior Options Strategist at Whatstrading.com, a site dedicated to helping traders make sense of the complex and fragmented nature of listed options trading.