Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Open Interest ahead of the Fed

Not everyone is on the sidelines to 'wait and see' what the Fed does. Here are a couple of screenshots that highlight open interest at a critical time (rate cuts, S&P at 1400, etc).
1) A list of stocks with the highest open interest
2) A list of options with the highest open interest

The difference is that the first list shows the total open interest of all options associated with the stock (i.e. S & P 500 INDEX). The second list shows the specific option in the option chain with the highest open interest (i.e. SPY MAY 132.00 P).

The first list can be used to get an idea of what stock/index option traders are hedging/speculating on, while the second list can sometimes provide an idea of the magnitude in the expected move of the underlying - think back to March, when there was an explosion of deep out-of-the-money BSC Puts.

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