Unusual Options Activity in East Stone Acquisition Corp. (ESSC)

Today, April 18, 2022, among the underlying components of the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in ESSC 5/20/2022 C $12.50

This was one with a volume of 23257. The currency IV is 70%, which is historical far higher than previous weeks.
Before the stock rallied 11%, these large $12.50 contracts came in.
The flow is overwhelmingly bullish at 62% bullish on the day.
The following orders were all dubbed in purple size, where size si greater than current OI. These orders are sorted by largest on the day, showing where most of the premium went (23k on the 12.50 May calls).
Most of the volume as come today with a 43000x in new volume!

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

You can see for each bearish position, the volume was greater than open interest (thus the exclamation mark)

Additionally, these orders were seen in the new Unusual Whales Hottest Chains tool as well as flow dashboard..

As mentioned, these orders were marked as a “sweep”. An options sweep (or sweep-to-fill) occurs when a broker splits an order into many parts in order to get the best possible pricings currently offered on the market.

These orders can often be filled across multiple exchanges and the broker will continue to fill the order lot by lot, always for the best possible price, until the order is completely filled.

Sweeps might stand out because they imply some entity (or entities) wanted to enter specific options contracts regardless of their price, as they were focused only on having their entire bulk order filled as quickly as possible. While the magnitude of sweeps might stand out, each one must be investigated thoroughly to understand what the sentiment of a trader is as compared to the overall flow.

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 volume on this chain has now increased to 34225 as of this writing; the open interest today was only 406, so we can intuit these contracts all as having been bought or sold to open, not closed.

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

Unusual Options Activity in ETRN

Again in the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in ETRN, on the ETRN 7/15/2022 C $9.00 chain:

There were 11195 contracts traded on the $9 strike call option dated for April 7/15, 2022, close to the ask at a spot of $0.55
The volume on this chain is greater than its open interest, as compared to the previous unusual activity in this report. The current total volume is 11758.
The major premium contract today was a 10k sized cross trade: Cross trades occur when a broker executed buy and sell orders for this same position from different client accounts and then reported them on an exchange. In other words, these are an aggregation of many positions taken on both the buy and sell side.
These are clean trades where volume > OI, or size > oi, and where they are opening trades (ie: traders are taking a new position).
You can see right at open (11:08am PST) traders took a huge bullish position, causing the stock to rally nearly 3% suddenly.
Always be aware of the new positions traders are taking and follow the flow

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

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.

As stated, these orders were greater than the chain’s open interest. Therefore, we might intuit that these contracts are being bought and sold to open.

You can also see a new feature on UW, mainly on the intraday charts we provide contextual updates. For example in the light blue marker, we now note special events, ie: where volume has exceeded OI. We have a ton of markers coming out to help traders get up to date contextual updates in their trades.

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