MBIA (MBI) sees a midday spike on high volume, is now up $1 to $9.17, and moving to session highs. Recent options trades on the mortgage insurance company include a 15000-contract block of Jan $11 calls bought for 75 cents per contract. it was tied to shares at $8.94 on a 36 delta and appears to be an opening trade. Jan 7.5, 9 and 10 calls on MBIA are also seeing interest, as are the Feb 10s. 28,000 calls and 2,030 puts traded on the stock and implied volatility is up 9 percent to 100 (First posted at 14:20).

*Scanning all single-stocks subject to 2500 contracts minimum call or put volume

Accenture (ACN) jumps $2.25 to $57.82 and morning options trades on the Dublin, Ireland management services and outsourcing company include a 3600-contract block of Jan 57.5 puts for $3.05 per contract on the International Securities Exchange. Data from the ISE reports an opening customer buyer. 5,940 now traded against 1,286 in open interest. One or more investors might be buying at-the-money puts on ACN to hedge recent gains in the stock. Shares are on a four-day 7.9 percent run higher.

*Scanning all single-stocks subject to 2500 contracts minimum call or put volume

With broad averages up some 3.6% this morning, overall option volume is running 18% above recent average pace and on track for 23million contracts, a welcome improvement over the volume seen during Monday’s 2.9% rally when just 14.1million contracts traded (and that included 2million contracts of exdiv volume!) Most active single names today include BAC, AAPL (the usual top two) followed by INTC, CSCO, and JPM. Intel Dec 25 calls are very active, with 28K trading (vwap 41cents) and much of the flow identified as closing cust buyers.