Salesforce.com (CRM) options have been busy over the past few days after the company unveiled its new enterprise collaboration application called Salesforce Chatter. The product is unique; as it is designed for business, but also includes the ability to use popular social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. It leverages the popularity of social networking apps to help a company’s employees communicate more effectively in this new media world (link to additional details.)

“Why do I know more about strangers on Facebook than my own employees? Now, through Salesforce Chatter, my business is tweeting me. My employees can use the models they love to get the collaboration they need,” according to Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com.

The action in the Salesforce.com’s share price has been interesting. While the stock has been performing well in 2009, up 94.4 percent year-to-date, it is down over the last few days despite a lot of hype about the company’s latest foray into social networking. CRM is down $1.28 to $62.32 today and off 6.8 percent since Monday. Moreover, as the chart below shows, there has been a steady increase in interest in CRM puts. Put open interest, a measure of outstanding options contracts, is up from 72K contracts on Nov 11 to 105K contracts today, an increase of 43 percent.


A falling stock price and increasing interest in puts is a sign that bearish sentiment is building. It seems kind of odd for a company in the midst of launching a “true breakthrough” product. Perhaps it’s a case of “buy the rumor, sell the news”? For whatever reason, the action in CRM stock and options doesn’t seem to reflect a lot of enthusiasm for the new product. Next, investors will be tuning in to the company’s second Keynote address at Dreamforce 2009 beginning at noon eastern time and then its final presentation at 7:15 p.m.