Andrea Kramer (akramer@sir-inc.com) LDK Solar Co., Ltd. (LDK) has followed the broader equities market into the red today ? and it looks like a slew of short-term speculators are betting on a continued downward trajectory for the Chinese solar concern.
So far today, LDK has seen almost 10,000 puts cross the tape ? nearly triple the number of LDK calls traded, and about four times the stock's expected single-session put volume. Attracting the most attention has been the at-the-money December 11 put, which has seen more than 8,600 contracts change hands on open interest of fewer than 1,100 contracts, pointing to the addition of new positions. Plus, 72% of the newly front-month puts have traded at the ask price, hinting at an abundance of freshly bought bearish bets.
However, today's preference for near-term puts is nothing new for LDK. In fact, the stock's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) currently rests at 3.83, suggesting that short-term puts nearly quadruple their call rivals. What's more, this ratio stands just two percentage points from an annual acme, implying that near-term options players have been more pessimistically positioned toward LDK just 2% of the time during the past year.
Elsewhere, short sellers are also ramping up their bearish exposure to LDK. During just the past month, short interest advanced by 14%, and now represents more than 23% of the stock's total available float. Nevertheless, there's still ample room for more bears on the bandwagon, as it would take fewer than two sessions to repurchase all of these pessimistic positions, at LDK's average pace of trading.
At last check, the shares of LDK have given up 1.4% to flirt with the $11.07 level.
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