Thread by @cppinvest

1/ Spent some time today trying to decipher the Tesla options mystery from this week with the 12/13/19 350 weekly calls. The conclusion – dealer ping pong – should clear up once and for all the notion that anything meaningful happens in this dumpster fire shareholder base.

2/ To review, 15,000 and 25,000 out-of-the-money contracts with four days to expiry traded on Monday and Tuesday. Seemingly noteworthy.

3/ Some perspective. Prior to Monday, the 20 day average volume for EVERY TESLA OPTION IN EXISTENCE was 250,000 contracts per day. That average has crept up; was 280,000 after Monday, was 320,000 today.

4/ So, interest in Tesla options has been increasing steadily of late. You’ll see from this progression on the 350 12/13/19 calls that this string first started trading on 11/1/19.

5/ Here’s volume AND open interest in the 350’s. You see that volume far exceeds open interest. Which means on Monday and Tuesday, dealers were batting these contracts back and forth. Open interest moved up on 12/9, moved up some more on 12/10, and sold off today.

6/ Here’s volume and open interest on the 360’s and 362.50’s. So whoever is trading these is either just rolling up or putting on some kind of a spread. There isn’t the corresponding OI in the put strings to suggest a straddle. Puts are on the right.

7/ My checks in the dealer community point out that most of this volume was small lots, under 500 each, which could imply just retail. Or, it could also imply someone trying to look like retail.

8/ These options trades usually have a corresponding equity trade to balance. As usual though, the volume and price action we're seeing isn't from institutions accumulating.

Maybe Value Analyst's patreon account is just taking off. . .

It’s after 6:00pm EDT. Perhaps someone can call into Cramer’s show and ask him for which one of his buddies he did a solid this week.

cc: @PlainSite.

@PlainSite apologize for the table add-ons. Twitter was freaking out as I was posting and giving me error messages.