A Review of Unusual Options Activity in Beyond Meat, Inc. (BYND)

Today, March 02, 2022, in the market capitalization-weighted index NASDAQ Global Select Market Composite (NasdaqGS), we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in Beyond Meat, which opened at $47.42.

There were 2,100 contracts for the March 18th, 2022 expirations cross-traded on the:

• $60 strike put options traded near the ask at a spot of $15.58 with a bid-ask spread of $15.10 to $15.70.
• $60 strike call options traded near the bid at a spot of $0.28 with a bid-ask spread of $0.27 to $0.33.
• These contracts were 33.3% in the money at the time of the transaction as Beyond Meat was trading around $45.01.
• Additionally, both chains had open interests of 1.1K and 1.5K, respectively, so the sizes of these orders already have surpassed that, implying these contracts were either bought or sold to open, not to close.

These orders come just after Beyond Meat posted its latest earnings report.

As stated, the orders in this report were cross trades:  

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.

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

Unusual Options Activity in Ferroglobe PLC (GSM)

In the Nasdaq Capital Market (NasdaqCM), we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity Ferroglobe PLC (GSM), which opened today at $7.45.

• There were 3,000 floor trades on the $8 strike call option dated for March 18th, 2022 bought to open at the ask for $0.40 with a bid-ask spread of $0.30 to $0.40.
• The open interest on this chain was approximately 2,000 contracts, so these orders may be intuited as having been bought or sold to open, not close.
• Be mindful, Ferroglobe reports its earnings today, March 2nd, 2022, after market close.

A tip from the flow:

Trades appended with the ↕ and 🔃 emojis are trades that have potentially came in together as a part of a strategy, and are coded accordingly (such as MLET or TLCT) under the codes column.  Clicking on these emojis will open all of the trades that came in together so that the holistic strategy may be investigated.

As of this writing, Ferroglobe has had 4,492 calls traded, which is 482% greater than its 30-day call average.

Of interest, these orders were marked as “floor”.  Floor traders work on the floor of an exchange.  When a floor trader executes a trade, exclusively for their own account, it must be reported on an exchange by the "floor" tag.  Click here to read about 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.”

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

Unusual Options Activity in STMicroelectronics N.V. (STM)

Finally, among the underlying components of the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in STMicroelectronics N.V. (STM), which opened today at $40.13.

• There were a series of contracts swept-to-fill on the $55 strike call option traded at and around $0.50 with a bid-ask spread of $0.45 to $0.55.

Furthermore, these orders come just after STMicroelectronics “got a new 600 million euros ($665.16 million) loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to support its research activities, the company said, as Europe tries to strengthen its own tech sector”.

As stated, 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.

Finally, these orders were found via the NEW Unusual Whales tickers flow tool; as seen, the call volume on STMicroelectronics is now 1,319.81% greater than its 30 day call volume average.

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

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