Sarah Wasserman (swasserman@sir-inc.com) Put players targeted Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) on Friday, with roughly 21,000 of these bearishly oriented options changing hands -- quadruple the banking behemoth's expected single-session put volume of just 4,600 contracts.
Friday's put-heavy activity is nothing new, though, as FITB currently sports a 10-day International Securities Exchange (ISE) put/call volume ratio of 12.23, which ranks above 96.6% of all other readings taken during the past year. In other words, speculators on the ISE have rarely initiated FITB puts at a faster pace.
FITB's January 14 put attracted notable volume on Friday, with over 5,000 contracts exchanged. In fact, upon further review, it appears that a portion of the volume at this strike was part of a bearish spread. Early Friday morning, 959 January 14 puts, marked "spread," changed hands at the ask price, while 959 January 12 puts, also deemed "spread," crossed at the bid price. Open interest at each of these front-month strikes increased substantially over the weekend, pointing to the initiation of a long put spread on FITB.
In this option trading strategy, the speculator is bearish, but has a downside target in mind for the stock. In the above scenario, our long put spread strategist is ultimately betting that FITB will backpedal below the $14 level, stopping right at, or just above, the $12 level by the time these contracts expire.
FITB is currently trading around $14.16.
No comments:
Post a Comment