Surge in September call buying.On Thursday, over 20,300 contracts traded on the September 6th 2019 $9 call option onBed Bath & Beyond (BBBY). With shares trading around $8.40, the option is a bet on a 6.6 rally in shares in the next 14 days. The option contract had a prior open interest of just 320 contracts, indicating a 63-fold surge in volume on the trade. Bed Bath & Beyond operates 1,533 stores around the world selling various home fashions, furnishings, and linens. Shares have been heavily discounted by 57 percent in the past year on slow-moving store growth. With 80 perc...

CFO follows large director buys this month.On Wednesday, August 21st, Aaron Alt, CFO ofSally Beauty Holdings (SBH), bought 1,000 more shares, paying just over $12,000 to do so. While a small buy, he is following on two director purchases on August 20th, in the amount of 3,000 and 10,000 shares, at a cost of $36,000 and $119,000 respectively. And on August 2nd, a director bought 7,000 shares as well, shelling out nearly $93,000. Insiders have been buyers of shares earlier in the year as well, notably in May when the share price was anywhere from 13 to 20 percent higher than the current pr...

Surge in September put buying.On Wednesday, over 5,000 contracts traded on the September 2019 $69.50 put options onExxonMobil (XOM). With a prior open interest of 260, this was a 19-fold surge in volume. With a current share price at $70, the options are just out-of-the-money. The option buyer could see a penny-for-penny move should the shares fall less than 1 percent from here. ExxonMobil shares have traded as low as $64.50 in the past year, so a drop to those lows within the next month could make the option worth as much as $5, about a 270 percent gain from its current price around $1....

Surge in put-buying indicates drop by the month’s end. On Tuesday, over 4,700 contracts traded on an August 30th $123 put option onJohnson & Johnson (JNJ). The bet, with shares of the healthcare giant trading around $131, implies a 7 percent drop by the end of next week. The option, with a prior open interest of around 150, saw volume increase by 32-fold as a result of the surge in trading. The company could certainly see shares drop that quickly. In the past year, a number of claims have been made against the company and its myriad of products, leading to high-publicity lawsuits....

Large buy on extremely low-valued put option.It’s been a tough year operationally and for shares ofTesla Motors (TSLA). One trader is even betting on a further drop in shares in the next month, possibly as a result of a broad market decline, but also possibly because of company-specific issues. On Friday, over 40,000 contracts traded on a September 2019 $50 put option, expiring just over one month away. With shares around $220, the $50 strike would trade in-the-money only if shares dropped over 75 percent! With a cost of $0.04, or $4 per contract, the option is a cheap bet on a big perce...

CEO and director buy heavily following bearish report. On Thursday, August 15th, Larry Culp, CEO ofGeneral Electric (GE), bought 252,000 shares, paying just under $2 million. He was joined by director Paula Reynolds. She bought 10,000 shares, paying about $85,300 to do so. GE was one of the most actively-traded companies on Thursday, as a bearish report by analyst Harry Markopoulos (in conjunction with an unnamed hedge fund) stated that as much as $38 billion in wealth at the company may be improperly accounted for. General Electric shares have been out of favor in the past few years ...

Owner Carl Icahn makes $30 million buy.On Tuesday, August 13th, billionaire investor Carl Icahn bought 4,572,521 more shares of a company he already owns more than 10 percent of,Conduent (CNDT). The stake, costing just under $30 million, increased the size of his holdings by about 14 percent to over 36.2 million shares. Icahn has previously bought shares in May, when he picked up over 6 million shares in three separate purchases. One director has bought this year, and no insiders have sold in over one year, when shares traded over 60 percent higher than today. Conduent provides busine...

September calls bet on a rebound in shares.It’s been a tough year forKraft-Heinz (KHC). But at least one trader is betting that the company’s post-earnings drop will see a bounce within the coming weeks. On Tuesday, over 12,600 contracts traded on a September $27.50 call option, a nine-fold surge in volume. With 37 days to go, it’s a bet that shares will rally about $1.20 from their current price of about $26.30, or about 4.6 percent. Kraft-Heinz, the branded food giant, has written off over $16 billion in value year to date, mostly reflecting that it overpaid to merge the two companies ...

Director makes $2 million buy.On Thursday, August 8th, Mellody Hobson, a director atJPMorgan Chase (JPM), bought 18,200 shares, increasing her stake to just over 101,300 shares. The total cost of this latest buy came in at just over $2 million. Hobson has been a repeat buyer of shares this year, buying 19,700 shares back in April. Many insiders at the big bank have been sellers of shares this year, although at higher prices than where shares currently trade. JPMorgan Chase is a global financial powerhouse, with traditional banking, commercial and investment banking, wealth management, an...

Surge of in-the-money call buying.The highest-volume option trade on Friday occurred in an unusual trade based on shares ofGeneral Electric (GE). The January 2020 $6 call options saw a surge in volume. With shares over $9, these options are about 50 percent in-the-money. If GE shares rally, the option should move higher penny-for-penny. If shares drop, they could still have some value at expiration. With the number of unusual options usually focusing on short-term or near-the-money trades, this one stands out as a potential way to play a multi-month rally in shares between now and Januar...