Volume Spike Investor

It is always interesting to see how traders and investors take their options trading action the first trading day after an options expiration date.  We are seeing an almost instant maneuvering into many of the January-2009 CALL options of active and volatile stocks in the NASDAQ 100 by traders and investors today.  This is being seen in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Research-in-Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM).  We are seeing new options volume over the open interest in some of these JAN-2010 CALLS grow by 15% or 20%, but some are growing by as much as 50% as you will see below.  We also attached the share prices with a 12:01 PM snapshot this Monday:

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) up 1.7% at $198.76 on 8.1 million shares.
CALL$    Volume    OpInt.
195.00    6,858    36,919
200.00    14,323    64,041
210.00    11,791    56,277
220.00    7,063    50,249

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) up 0.15% at $597.51 on 965,000 shares.
CALL$    Volume    OpInt.
590.00    822    4,137
600.00    1,768    9,757
610.00    1,007    3,390
620.00    595    3,681
630.00    1,154    2,818
640.00    632    3,639
650.00    1,174    4,921

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) up 3% at $132.33 on over 5.1 million shares.
CALL$    Volume    OpInt.
125.00    1,950    8,478
130.00    5,396    11,755
135.00    5,685    12,390
140.00    3,710    8,751
145.00    4,961    8,851
150.00    1,504    7,958

Research-in-Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) up 0.4% at $70.29 on about 10.7 million shares.
70.00    13,681    54,332
73.38    3,971    10,631
75.00    7,027    38,981
76.63    1,626    7,313
80.00    2,417    103,417
83.38    259    3,890
85.00    1,218    13,788

As a reminder, each 10,000 option contracts is the equivalent of 1 million shares of common stock on a fully leveraged basis.  With that in mind, the actual bets being made are much larger than the raw shares traded mid-day may indicate.

JON C. OGG
DECEMBER 21, 2009