Does anyone have any insight into why VZ and T both have call volumes for the Jan 2012 monthlies of over 3 million today? http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/vz/option-chain http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/t/option-chain Someone with big money expects a big move.
http://www.optionistics.com/f/stock_prices?symbol=t http://www.optionistics.com/f/stock_prices?symbol=vz Low ivs and both stocks uptrending
Today, Fri., 1-6-12, no evidence of the huge Jan. 2012 monthly call volumes in VZ and T that were listed both on IB options brief page( under options analysis in Elitetrader) and nasdaq.com The total volume for all strikes yesterday was about 5 million contracts for each. No evidence of it today in open interest. So, apparently there was bad data or they were all closed before the end of the day. Question: Does a daytraded options contract open and closed in the same day count as 2 contracts traded in the volume??? There is evidence in the volume on bigcharts option charts of 29 T call... look at the volumes in the afternoon. http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/ad...rsToggle=false&chartStyleToggle=false&state=9 Both VZ and T paid around a .50 dividend today, so presumably that was the reason for the huge volumes yesterday.
It's probably a dividend related issue. See the following post: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=233080
Many thanks dragonman, your thread was very helpful... especiallly the link to the ISE paper. http://www.ise.com/assets/files/abo...ns_Industry.pdf This surely would seem to explain the incredibly high call volumes yesterday.
Yep Dividend play. JPM had the same think over the last week. Pretty genius way of collecting a dividend. Options are where its at.