Facebook Put Options Active Down to $19

Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is now seeing active trading in its PUT options all the way down to the $19 strike price in AUGUST 2012 expiration contracts.  In fact, we have seen almost 60,000 contracts trade from the $19 to $30 strike price put options.  That 60,000 contract count represents some 6 million shares on a fully leveraged basis.

The trading volume is dominated today in the PUTS over the CALLS.  In the CALL options in AUGUST we looked at the active contracts being the $20 to $33 strike prices.  We have seen almost 40,000 contracts trade among all of those strike prices, which represents about 4 million shares on a fully leveraged basis.

Even the September PUTS are much more dominant than the CALLS today.  Facebook shares are down 9.6% at $24.32 on just over 81 million shares as of 12:40 PM EST this Friday after last night’s earnings. The prior post-IPO low was $25.52 and shares apparently went as low as $22.28 today.

Here is the spread from Yahoo! Finance of the AUGUST PUTS:

JON C. OGG