A Review of Unusual Options Activity in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Co (HMHC), iShares Global Clean Energy ETF. (ICLN), and Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE)

Unusual Options Activity in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMHC)

Today, April 06, 2022, among the underlying components of the NYSE, it is important to see how whales changed positions in contracts overtime. Looking at HMHC yesterday:

• There were 36,235 contracts traded on the $22.5 strike call option dated for June 17th, 2022.
• This represents an 18000% increase in new volume and sustained OI. That is an incredible change. They traded from 0.15 to 0.49 high of the day. Numerous floor trades came in.
• On the Unusual Whales blog is a report on floor traders' performance. Here is a snippet:
• More interestingly, we found that floor traders do not bet on crazy far OTM calls. Instead, most of the purchased weekly calls are ~10% ITM, with about a 40% chance to turn a profit. And when it comes to OTM calls, nearly half of these trades end up making gains and roughly a third of them can hit 50% and above.

Seen above are the noteworthy options in HMHC from the Unusual Whales flow tool.

You can see that OI increased, meaning traders were buying new positions yesterday and have sustained buying pressure. Look at the top right, they rallied in call activity as HMHC posted green (up nearly 1%) on a red day. 

It seems, from today’s flow, whales remain bullish on this ticker. Call activity is skyrocketing, on a ticker that receives no action. 

Here is also the increasing call volumes represented in tabular form.

To view more information about HMHC's daily flow breakdown, click here to visit unusualwhales.com.

Unusual Options Activity in iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN)

Again in the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in ICLN, which opened today at $21.33.

• There were 10304 contracts traded on the $23 strike call option dated for April 14th, 2022.
• Unfortunately it looks like the whales existed their positions, as OI was not sustained.
• A tip from the flow: Trades appended with 🛍️ can be intuited as bought or sold to open. This determination is made if the size of the trade was greater than the chain's open interest.  Only trades that can be positively identified as being bought or sold to open will be marked as such (with the 🛍️ symbol).  Be mindful! Trades without the 🛍️ symbol might still have been bought or sold to open!

Seen above are the noteworthy options orders in ICLN from the Unusual Whales flow tool.

Seen above is the aforementioned chain’s historical volume, in red, and open interest, in blue, as bar charts behind the requisite bid and ask, in a light blue and darker shade, respectively.

The open interest on these contracts has not changed since that initial volume spike today morning (refer to the first image).  As the volume today was higher than the open interest, it can be intuited that these contracts were potentially bought to open.

However, throughout the day, traders may be looking to exit on this chain, as well, or exercise the contracts (for any reason), so only by looking back at the open interest tomorrow can we know as a matter of fact.

To view more information about ICLN's flow breakdown, click here to visit unusualwhales.com.

Unusual Options Activity in Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE)

Finally and again, in the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in Cenovus Energy Inc, which opened today red.

• There were 23920 contracts traded on the 6/17/2022 18 strike call.
• This volume is nearly 22x the current OI on that chain.
• You can see this volume came from one floor trader who spent 1.5 million in premium on the position.
• Moreover, you can now see that _today_ the floor trader kept his position, as OI is sustained.

Unlike in ICLN’s case, we can assume the whale has kept their position.

To view more information about CVE’s flow breakdown, click here to visit unusualwhales.com.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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