The company averages 2,189 option contracts traded a day. In the first hour and a half of trading today nearly 3,300 contracts have traded. Further, 3,173 of those were puts (26:1 put:call ratio). The day's biggest trades are the Apr 80 puts on the offer (customer purchasing) over 3,000 times. The OI (218) is much smaller than the trade volume (3,155); this was an opening position. The Apr 80 puts traded 4.70 vs. 85.40 stock delta neutral (let's assume a 34 delta). That is the equivalent of buying 2 puts and 1 call. Here is the calculation for the call purchase based on 85.40 stock purchase. Call = Put + parity + interest - dividend = 4.70 + 5.40 + ~0.20 - 0.89 Call = 9.41 So the trade buys one straddle for 9.41 + 4.70 = 14.11 and one additional put for 4.70. The straddle makes money at expo. if the stock goes above 94.11 or below 65.89. Since the trade also has a long put which makes money at expo. with the stock below 75.30 (80 - 4.70) this is a bearish bet. It also gets long vol, which is generally bearish. The stock chart fills in the rest of the picture. The stock has run from 69 to 85 in the last couple of months. This is a bearish bet on a stock with a $17 (25%) run up in recent months. Keep in mind AVB's business (Real Estate Investment Trust). You can read the details, trades, prices, charts on my blog here: http://livevol.blogspot.com/2009/12/avalonbay-avb-bearish-lopsided-straddle.html