Unusual Options Activity

1. AK Steel (AKS)- 6,000 Mar 27 weekly $4.50 calls were purchased for $0.08-$0.09 each. Other steel stocks, United States Steel, Steel Dynamics, and Nucor, have all saw big upside call buying in recent weeks.
2. ING Groep NV (ING)- 5,000+ Oct $15 calls were bought for $0.95-$1.05 each, following yesterday’s buyer of 14,000 Oct $15 calls. 2/3rds of the current total call open interest is from these Oct calls.
3. Oracle (ORCL)- 7,400 Apr 24 weekly $43 puts were sold for $0.48 each. The company raised their dividend 25% last night, but missed on Q3 revenue estimates (on a constant currency basis they were up 6%).
4. Philip Morris International (PM)- A rollout from 3,615 June $80 puts ($4.91 credit) into 3,108 June $77.50 puts ($3.50 debit) today. 8,000 Apr 17 $75 puts were purchased for $0.67-$0.69 each on March 10th.
5. Prudential Financial (PRU)- Roughly 3,000 Apr $85 calls were bought for $0.88-$0.99 each, against open interest of 17,550 contracts. The vast majority of the current open interest is due to buying on March 6th for $1.50-$1.82 each. Both of today’s trades in (PRU) and (ING) are especially interesting since they come ahead of the Fed at 2:00 P.M. EST.

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AKS ING ORCL PM PRU unusual options activity