they seem to have little volume and little Open Interest? Yesterday because of the big VIX jump I sold 11 of the March 31 2014 puts. For SPY ETF I sold them for 12.20-12.70 and the last price listed as a trade are the ones I sold. Open interest shows only 38 which seems real small. Only 38 contracts exist on this strike? Today trading volume is 0 with the bid finishing at 11.59 x24 11x79 x32 and there was much less orders sitting on the orderbook today compared to yesterday. If you look at the chart my trade so far is the highest price trade, it seems this strike price only started trading on Thursday of last week. so whoever bought my 11 contracts was going long. (Unless it was a buy to close order? they sold cheap last week and decided to pay to close out because of the spooked out market yesterday) but OI is higher today than yesterday so I suspect it was a new long position.
I use them as a financing tool in my IRA but I wouldn't say I trade them. Not much volume in the long-dates ones, especially in the deeps that I want in single names.