Silver Options Down as VIX Tops 17

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Your intraday options trading update.

The market is broadly lower as investors fret over debt problems faced by Greece and Portugal, and watch crude oil futures declining to around $101 a barrel. Major options trading vehicle iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) is down more than 7% to 34.66. The SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration ETF (NYSE: XOP), made up of the major gas companies, is down more than 4% to about $58.

At one point the selling in crude oil futures forced the CME to halt trading in the commodity as it hit its daily price limit. This triggered so-called “circuit breakers” adding to general market jitters. Problems with the euro zone sent the euro down to $1.43 against the dollar, below it 50-day moving average.

High Option Volume by Strike

The SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) holds top three strike positions with the SPY Aug11 126 Put trading 70253, contracts, trading up .50 to 2.46. Two SPY May Weeklys see more than 55,000 contracts. The Wk2 135 Put is up .73 to 1.08 and the Wk2 134 put is up .41 to .58.

Technology SPDR (NYSE: XLK) sees 52,163 options trade in the XLK May11 27 Call. It’s down .07 to .09 as the XLK drops about 1% to 26.55.

Major equity seeing volume is Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) though stock is virtually flat at 17.80. The CSCO May11 17 Put is flat at .23 on 43,722 contracts. 

Also Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) drops more than 7% to 17.17 and its YHOO Jun11 18 Calls trade about 38,000 options, down .54 to .61.

Major Stock Trading Volume Movers

Starwood Property (NYSE: STWD) down more than 1% on about 12 million shares as stock falls to 21.71. Starwood announced plans to offer 22 million shares of stock and up to another 3.3 million shares to the underwriters.

Rovi Corp. (NASDAQ: ROVI) trades 9.3 million shares as it jumps 8.98 to 58.66. Rovi’s first quarter numbers topped analysts’ expectations and Piper Jaffray raised its price target to 72 from 71.

IntraLink Holdings (NYSE: IL) plummets, down 9.01 to 20.98 as quarterly revenues disappoint and guidance didn’t look much better. IL offers software-as-a-service.

Find more option analysis and trading ideas at  Options Trading Strategies.

Stocks/Underlying – Big Daily Change in Option Volume

Rovi roves over to this heading, trading more than 18,000 options, arise of about 1200%. 

IntraLink hit here too, trading about 2800 options, a rise of more than 800%.

Office Depot (NYSE: ODP) trades 22,316 options, a rise of more than 700%, as the retailer rises .16 to 4.43. OptionMONSTER reports a total of 20,000 contracts trade in the ODP Jan 2013 4 Calls and ODP Jan 2013 4 Puts.  Puts went for .85 and the calls for 1.25.  

Toll Bros (NYSE: TOL) trades 10,381 options, a rise of more than 600%. TOL down .28 to 20.25. Most on the put side including 4325 of the TOL May 21. Last sale there is .75.

Stocks/Underlying – High Option Volume

The iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) trades more than 500,000 options and nearly 120 million fund shares.

The SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) has option volume of about 484,000 contracts as it falls 1.81 to 134.06. The Standard & Poor’s Index Options (CBOE: SPX) falls sharply 18.61 to 1338.55 on volume of 210,000 options contracts.

The CBOE Volatility Index (CBOE: VIX) is up 1.44 to 17.35 with 94,060 options trading on the index.

Yahoo trades nearly 240,000 options contracts while Cisco trades about 230,000.

The iShares Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) sells off, dropping 1.72 to 83.81 and trades about 108,000 options. 

Burney Simpson is the managing editor of InvestorPlace options pages.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2011/05/silver-options-down-again-as-vix-tops-17-xlk-csco-yhoo-slv-spy/.

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