CIT Group (CIT) is seeing relative strength and increasing options action (3X avg daily) on news it has hired John Thain as CEO. In his 30-year career, Thain has risen to top executive positions at Merrill, Goldman, and the NYSE. (register to read more …)

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Gold Fields (GFI) is off 89 cents to $11.05 after gold prices plummeted $37 to $1075 an ounce Thursday. In the options market, morning trades include Apr 12 - 14 call spreads, apparently sold at 27 cents, 7000X. It might (register to read more …)

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Gerdau (GGB) with a large buy-write Monday, as 4,000 June $20 calls are sold for $0.85 against a large equity purchase of 125,000 shares. Shares have held rather strong during the recent steel sell-off and can be seen as (register to read more …)

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Wyndham Worldwide (WYN) is up 25 cents to $17.45 and the 12K Nov 17.5 calls that traded for about $1.22 might be part of a buy-write. The top trade (10.8K) was marked “tied” and coincided with a block of 574K (register to read more …)

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Citi (C) Jan 2011 calls at the $5 strike saw an uptick in activity in afternoon trading Tuesday. Four blocks, of 50K each, totaling 200K contracts hit bid-side for $1.28. The trades were part of a sale of 233,000 contracts (register to read more …)

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Aetna (AET) is down 25 cents to $28 and 20K Nov 31 calls traded for an average of 92.5 cents per contract. They hit bid-side and were tied to shares at $27.90 — possibly a buy-write strategy. If so, the (register to read more …)

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Big Print in Weatherford (WFT) after an investor sold 20,000 January 2010 calls at the $25 strike against a positoin in WFT shares at $20.45, according to a contact on the exchange floor. There was heavy trading in WFT shares (register to read more …)

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DFS, COF, BAC

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in a “buy-write”, the investor normally sells 1 call for every 100 shares. In this case, the strategist sold Qwest call options for 20 cents against shares at $3.94.

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Human Genome Sciences (HGSI) is up 12 cents to $3.46 and 22K calls traded today, which represents 5X the expected for midday trading. January 2010 calls at the $10 line are the most actives. More than 10K traded and nearly (register to read more …)

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