A roughly quarter of a million dollar play in the 17Apr’14 expiry $74 strike put options on Las Vegas Sands Corp (Ticker: LVS) caught our eye this morning, as just one full trading session remains in the life of these contracts in this holiday-shortened week. Shares in LVS are up more than 2.0% on the session at $74.90 just before 11:30 am ET and off an earlier session high of $75.44. Like many of the relative outperformers of 2014, shares in LVS have declined substantially since the beginning of March, down around 15% at its current level from a high of $88.28. Recent sessions have been volatile in this and other high-beta names, and perhaps this environment is just what the morning’s put trader is looking for ahead of expiration.
The prior two trading sessions this week saw shares in LVS trade up initially only to get slammed midday. Perhaps the aim of the very short-term trade in the $74 puts this morning was for this pattern to persist. It looks like around 4,000 of the 17Apr’14 $74 puts were purchased at an average premium of $0.62 each in the early going, versus open interest of just 264 contracts. Thus far in the session, premium on the $74 puts has eroded amid gains in the price of the underlying. But, if the shares suffer a midday slump as they have in recent sessions, premium on these contracts would move inversely. For example, on Tuesday, the stock opened at $74.73, but by 1:00 pm ET had dropped about 5.0% down to its intraday low of $71.09, ultimately ending the session down just 2.0% to close at $73.19.
