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Someone's looking for a Carnival rally in Brazil's top bank, with the help of an unusual options strategy. Shortly after lunch on Friday, a trader sold 10,180 June 17 puts in Itau Unibanco (ITUB) for $3.58. At the same second, he or she bought exactly the same number...
Bears are digging for downside in gold miners, one of the worst-performing major industry groups this year. More than 23,000 December 11 puts were bought yesterday in Barrick Gold (ABX). The first blocks changed hands for $0.10 but premiums rose to $0.12 as the bids...
Support and resistance may be at play on some key charts. In case you don't know, support and resistance are important price levels where buyers and sellers tend to be active. Traders often use them to decide when to enter or exit positions. One technique is to buy a...
Someone's cleaning up as consumer staples defy the market selloff. Just look at Procter & Gamble (PG), whose brands include Tide laundry detergent, Bounty paper towels and Dawn dish-washing liquid. It's one of the best-performing members of the Dow Jones...
Someone's bracing for more bad news in one of the market's weakest sectors. Energy stocks, on average, have lost twice as much value as the broader S&P 500 over the last month. A combination of rising crude-oil inventories, bearish chart patterns and weakening...
Cell phones and natural gas. Those are some big trades in the options market today. Let's start with Sprint (S), which saw the purchase of 20,000 May 7 calls for $0.50 and the sale of 40,000 May 8 calls for $0.21. It's a little complicated, so here's a breakdown of...
We recently outlined protective puts and covered calls as common hedging techniques. This brings us to the important question of selling options versus buying options. To understand the these two basic kinds of transactions, traders need to recognize the difference...
Most clients know the VIX measures the cost of options on the S&P 500. Are you aware that TradeStation's award-winning platform can go miles deeper by analyzing all the stocks in the market? Capitalize on our implied-volatility data to determine whether the...
Bears are shopping for downside in the retail space after a rough start to the month. A block of 40,000 December 47 puts was purchased this morning in SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) for $1.08. It was one of the largest transactions in the entire market. Puts can make...