Courtesy of Karl Denninger at Market Ticker
Ok, this is unusual.
Nokia (NOK) has a lot of options activity on the CALL side — and what looks like a straddle on the Augusts.
Does someone know something about the company being in play?
There has been persistent chatter for quite a while, but no transaction and everyone who has been rumored to be interested has denied it.
But what you can't deny is the over 10,000 puts and 10,000 calls traded on the $2.50 strike today against O/I of 2,800 and 11k, respectively. That looks like a straddle and it cost somewhere around 35-37 cents, so whoever is doing it expects a pretty decent-sized move in the next two weeks.
More interesting is the September $3/$2.50 call/put activity, both exceeding open interest. The $2.50 calls are also active.
That 35 cent straddle looks kinda interesting albeit very short-dated. The $3 Sept CALLs look interesting too at 15 cents. Of course for those to hit you need a nearly 30% move in the next month and a half!
That sounds preposterous until you look at the price history over the last month…. oh, and the volume too over the last couple of days…..
I think the company is in play and there's some insider game-playing going on.
Disclosure: The author has a modest speculative position.
