Volume Spike Investor

We are starting to see some increased trading activity in stock options of  Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC).  Most days now have financial stocks with various put and call optiosn activity, but this looks larger than most days so far for less than two hours into the trading day.  Below is where you will get an idea of the volume, and recall that 10,000 contracts equals 1,000,000 shares on a fully leveraged basis.

OPTION/STRIKE        Volume    OpInt
SEPT08 $25.00 PUT    22,281   61,543
SEPT08 $26.00 PUT    1,024    13,565
SEPT08 $27.50 PUT    3,184    64,835
SEPT08 $29.00 PUT    3,592    16,363
SEPT08 $30.00 PUT    10,177  39,076

After looking at the same months calls, it seems that either another bet was made or that at least a hedging transaction was made:

OPTION/STRIKE            Volume    OpInt
SEPT08 $34.00 CALL    10,116    12,202

Wells Fargo shares are down over 4%at $27.56 as of 11:16 AM EST, and its 52-week trading range is $20.46 to $37.99.

Jon C. Ogg
August 19, 2008