Harold, Thanks for the idea. One problem is that if the 700 Sep5 calls were open contracts that were being sold (say, back to the MM), and the buyer of those contracts closed them out by exercising them, would we not have seen a reduction in the number of open contracts by 700? (Hence the other possibility that the Sep5 calls were new contracts that were opened and closed the same day, since we did not see a change in the number of open contracts.) So I'm still puzzled by this... Unless the contracts sold back were already open, as you suggest, but not closed out the same day, so that the open interest count has not changed yet.
Another puzzle is why the remaining 1600+ Sep5 calls were not rolled over yet. While it is doubtful that the share price could be pushed below 5 at today's close to make these calls expire worthless, there is risk involved in holding the calls right up to expiration. Perhaps many of them were closed out yesterday, and we'll see that in today's count.
Perhaps all we really have here is a delay in the reduction in the count of open contracts, for the contracts that were closed by exercise? I've never been a close watcher of the options market, so I don't know what the usual reporting delays are. Maybe this is a common occurrence.
FWIW, there were additional Sep5 and Dec5 contracts traded that day, but the two 700 blocks appear to have transacted at a distinct point in time. |
