William, I did not follow the options' activities last week on VLNC, but some people reported that at the beginning of the week the open interest was about 800 contracts higher than the closing interest, unless those 800 contracts traded as options during the week (closing open positions) which I do not know if they did, one must assume that indeed these were exercised. Of course, there might always be the possibility of report errors, for instance, today there is a chunk of 100 contracts in the March 5 calls, but the open position does not reflect that change, maybe that have different timing on these reports. I would assume that FMK and Mooter report is correct since it is reflected in the appropriate decline in the open position. If it is bullish or bearish is a different story, since as we have mentioned there are number of likely scenarios where these contracts were part of a hedging situation, including an owner of 100,000 shares having written in the past covered options, or even a holder of convertible paper increasing its return via an option writing program. There certainly was no strong indication in the trading of the commons today that an urgent buyer was there scooping stock.
Zeev |
