Unusual Put Options Trading in Ultra Petroleum (UPL)

Ultra Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: UPL) is seeing some interesting trading in the put options one month out.  With today being options expiration date, we’d normally attribute the trading to that.  This does not appear to be tied to expiration date and it is on the heels of yesterday’s post-earnings drop.

In the March 2012 PUTS, we have seen the $27.00 strike price trade some 4,087 contracts versus a prior open interest of 1,188 contracts.

This does not appear to be a direct rollover from one month to the next either.  The February options expiring today had an open interest in the $27.00-strike puts of 1,815 contracts.  This may just be a part of a synthetic-long transaction, but it was hard not to notice.

Ultra Petroleum shares are up 2.5% at $24.32 and the 2.87 million shares traded so far is already above the average daily volume of 2.77 million shares.