Volume Spike Investor

Unitedhealth Group, Inc. (NYSE: UNH) saw what looks like major PUT OPTION activity today during market hours, but the reality is that this looks more like an options roll-out trade ahead of Friday’s expiration.  Below are the volumes for each and you can see the open interest:

Contract/Strike           Volume     OpInt
JUL08 $25.00 PUTS      66,375    68,457
AUG08 $25.00 PUTS    66,376    20,872

This roll-out is only for one month but 66,000 contracts is representative of 6.6 million shares.  An average day’s volume is about 13.8 million shares.

Jon Ogg
July 16, 2008 (4:45 PM EST)