Airgas call volume and total open interest spiked this week to multi-year highs, directly ahead of the deal that caused shares to gap nearly 40% higher to the $60 level this morning, suggesting traders may have reason to accumulate upside exposure before today’s announcement. Call volume over the preceding four days exceded 8200 ccontracts, the busiest period in two years, including more than 2000 of the April 55 calls, most of which were bought yesterday for 10cents to open a new position when shares were below $44.00. Total call open interest grew from 3600 to 8600 contracts over the week. In contrast to the customer account type used to frontrun the Perot deal last year, yesterday’s clearing data shows most of the buying was categorized as Firm account for clearing purposes.


ARG Options Action Ahead of Announcement (click for larger)