The company averages 517 option contracts traded a day. With an hour and a half to go there have been nearly 3,000 contracts traded. Further, the call to put ratio is 101:1. The biggest trades of the day show that someone is buying the Jan 12.5 calls; over 2,700 of these calls have traded (customer purchases). The open interest (OI) in the Jan 12.5 calls is ~2100. However, this OI has been steadily growing of recent on 12/24. Looking at the Jan 12.5 calls trades on 12/24 reveals that those orders were purchases as well. This implies that the 2700 traded today are new positions - adding to the current one. Note the purchasers paid 0.42 and 0.45 on 12/24. Today they are paying up to 0.50. This is call accumulation paying up as the accumulation continues on a 101:1 ratio calls to puts. You can read the details, prices, snapshots, trades on my blog: http://livevol.blogspot.com/2009/12/gap-tea-company-tea-call-accumulator.html
could be cheap bait...........know what I mean. 1 of my many hats is to run a sportfishing boat for 1 of the owners of a supermarket chain here on L.I. I'll ask him how their #'s were for last quarter, he'll be back from vac. next week. last 8 days of trading has made a bullish patern though......we'll see.
The May 12.5 calls have OI of 1,324. On 12/23 the OI jumped by 900 - those were opening order purchases as well. Doesn't necessarily mean anything, but there is a trend on the OTM calls from what I see.