Thursday, October 2, 2014

Options: "Transocean LTD Trader Bets Big On Steeper Losses" (RIG)

RIG is trading down just under 1% at $30.76. As the headline said on Tuesday: "Chartology: "Energy- Worst performer over 90 days is on channel support" (XLE; ERY; XOP)".

The triple leveraged inverse energy ETF I mentioned in that post, the Direxion ERY is up 10.62% in under 48 hours. As the retail guys like to point out, "Now Mr. Bigg, if you annualize that"...
Energy is weak, triple-levered ETF's are dangerous.

From Schaeffer's Research:
Transocean LTD (NYSE:RIG) closed Wednesday 2.9% lower at $31.05, but not before hitting a fresh 10-year low of $30.87 in intraday action. This is just more of the same, though, for a stock that's shed 37.2% year-to-date. This sharp move south had put players continuing to pile on, with volume running at three times what's typically seen. Against this accelerated demand, the equity's 30-day at-the-money implied volatility surged 17.3% to 35.7% -- a 52-week peak.

Most active were RIG's November 27 and 35 puts, which may have been used to initiate a spread in the back-month series -- and are tied to stock. Elsewhere, the equity's January 2015 28-strike put saw notable activity due to a massive block of 10,000 contracts that was bought to open for $0.99 apiece, resulting in an initial net debit of $990,000 (number of contracts * premium paid * 100 shares per contract)....MORE