For those keeping track, we’ve now had a lower close for the 4th time in 5 trading days!  You can just feel the bulls getting a little antsy…it’s been very easy these last howevermany months, but surely that cannot last forever!

Volatility is picking up:  the $SPX ATR(5) is at its highest value since June; not to mention the $VIX is now well off its lows and back near 25%…

When will this latest dip be bought?  1040?  1020?  Back in triple digits?!  Can you imagine the horror if we drop back down there!?  With the blind-dip-buying paradigm over, headlines of Financial Armageddon would once again run amok in the blogosphere…

But…I’d venture to guess that I’m getting a little ahead of myself.  Having had pretty great back-to-back days with my puts-a-plenty-portfolio (alliteration!), I’m sure I’ll get smacked back down to reality in the coming days.  The buying ‘daze’ will be back in no time.

To that effect, here are a few names with some heavy speculative call action from Monday:

• IOC, in which I own puts, saw over 2:1 call:put volume today, with traders taking up positions for a bounce via 8k+ Jan’10 75. calls…
• SNDK lighting up the call volume charts with a monster day, mostly on the backs of rumors and perhaps a short-squeeze.  Here, again, Jan’10 calls were the most active…
• V calls out-traded puts at least 5:1 just 1 day before earnings…
• And here’s one of those that really makes you go “hmm…I wonder if someone knows something that I don’t”…15k+ WYN Nov’09 17.5 calls (2x open interest) traded today, also just 1 day before earnings.  To put things in perspective, a grand total of 469 put contracts traded across all expirations & strikes.  The put:call ratio overall was something like 1:40.
• See also:  PCS.  This one’s a bit longer term, though, with 20k+ May’10 10. calls in action (1:30 overall put:call ratio).
• Not necessarily bullish for the market as a whole…but a lot of action also seen in UUP Dec’09 ATM calls.  A bullish spread or two or several hundred may be involved with the 23./24. strikes.

PERSONALLY:
As mentioned above, I’ve had very good back-to-back days including a +3%-er today – a very active day, to be sure, with just as many new put positions added as sold.  Most of those now have protective stops, so that they don’t fall completely out of profitability when the market bitch slap’s me back to the Miracle Meltup reality.

Taking it easy tomorrow with just 4 potential new entries…again, all puts:  AAPL (@200.), CREE (@43.75), GLW (@15.29), TIN (@16.82).