This is a very bad idea for a retail guy. You have no idea what that late order is attempting to accomplish. No idea what else that trader has in his position. No idea if it's a vol bet or a delta bet or a hedge. Even if you could be sure it's a delta bet, you won't know which direction works better for that trader without know his stock position. Ex: Buying hedged calls is a great way make money as the market drops. I'd be shocked if any retail trader could show a successful track record doing this.
yes. you see a lot of 3 letter names buying or selling odd chf zero delta in massive . usdjpy they usually know ages before and this wont be a big one so probably less clear. i imagine they will be ko-ing some audjpy and usdjpy prdc's with discrete fixings so whats that above 105-108. i think they marked those at zero at the start so dont actually do anything except book large profit and remain solvent. soros usually buys billions of usdjpy and sells at the high when boj intervenes. hope this helps in assessing P(A given B) and you dont go in with an undersized position before it melts.
"Ex: Buying hedged calls is a great way make money as the market drops." I was a big fan of that one. Hate discussing the directional influences I allowed into my trading, but if I thought we were gunna crap... vol was low... that warm fuzzy feeling when the market shits and those calls are trading higher.
Pretty much what @Jerk-off-store said. You try everything. You break it up and go through different brokers. You try to place most of it OTC quietly (good luck with that... I'd crucify a broker if they didn't show me everything that everyone was doing). You see if any big counterparties are out there looking for size. (If you ever heard the expression 'size trades to size,' this is why. Sometimes you just have too much size for the market and have no choice but to wait until someone else provides you the opportunity). If you are taking off risk you will trade closer to FV or go to market, if you can't sleep at night you definitely go to market. If you are putting on risk, they have to come to you and pay the toll. If you take a lot of edge on a deal and want to get risk-off you might get extremely aggressive on the first half of the risk then back off on the balance... Once again, like Jerk-off-store said, you try everything.
Given that insiders have to disclose their trading in options on their company stock I can't imagine the guy was in that CEO job much longer!
Right before 9-11 I was working on a desk that sold thousands of puts to some lucky (wink wink) trader. Remember the boss man teaching the entire desk about skew and how good this trade was, ya know cause LOOK AT THAT SKEW LEVEL! Apparently noone cared about that either.