Augie, I am aware that not all stocks have options that expire every month.
Furthermore March and June are end of Quarter (if I am not mistaken), so perhaps those months may have more option players.
However, it it is end of Quarter manipulation, the above would imply that a big % of these options are held by institutions as opposed to sold to options speculators. Would this pit the selling institution against the buying institution? I doubt J6P is buying more options just becaue it is EOQ. However, the fact that there are no options offered yet on INTC MSFT CSCO for june, that everyone who wants to play those is just playing the QQQ's instead. Nonetheless that buildup in June QQQ puts to me is a sign of severe pessimism. Zeev might take the opposite opinion and state that QQQ is "smarter money" than individual equity money, but that has not proven to be the case to me as QQQ seems to have been the driver for some time.
All this is perhaps getting somewhat more complicated than necessary, perhaps.
What has been working is QQQ has been fininsing right at pain for months and this will be #5 in a row most likely (if one considers 34-36 range a success and I do). Again my definition of pain win is if Pain is hit during expiry week rather than finishes exactly at pain (as we have reversed and gone the other direction on Wed of expiry week several times).
QQQ has options every month and someone will have to correct me on this but I think June options on MSFT CSCO INTC will be offered at the end of this expiry. Not positive exactly how this works, maybe someone knows better on this. I am pretty sure options are available at least every other month on nearly everything that has options, but there are more "holes" than that right now if one looks ahead at CBOE on some of these stocks. Not all months that will be available are necessarily traded/available yet, is my understanding (which could be wrong).
I want to see what happens at rollover to get a better picture.
Your point is they prop up the QQQ's with MSFT INTC CSCO QCOM etc, and let the other stuff fall thru the floor in June. Not sure that works as I doubt those biggies can hold up the QQQ is everything else is getting crushed. Also there really is no way for both Zeev and I to be right if he is calling for such a major low and I am suggesting Max pain on the QQQ's. Not really possible. QQQ is not going to be 38 37 or even 35 if the comp is at the Sept bottom or anywhere close. The comp simply will not be near the sept bottom with the QQQ at max pain (as we see it now).
Nonetheless this discussion was wothwhile, and I will try and do a mental tracking of increases in option activity in expiry week, to see where people roll over their options (or if they do). Actually I will be on vacation for 3 days next week so I will miss expiry (sigh). Perhaps someone can track QQQ MSFT INTC CSCO volumes in other months to see if we can get a trend as to how stuff gets rolled over.
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