- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- 10 Stock Picks for This 'Gradual Recovery'
- Recovery's Real Shape? Not a W: Stock Picker
- Market Direction into 2010 Depends on This: Analysts
- Prep Your Portfolio for Next Week: Stock Pickers
- Art Cashin: Why Markets Face 'Enormous' 1-Day Swings
- India or China: Which Is the Better Place to Invest?
- What Traders Expect From This Bank Stock
- Gold Is a Bad Inflation Hedge—Like Oil: Stock Picker
MOST SHARED
- CNBC Video: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping American Great
- CNBC TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping America Great
- Has Twitter's Finest Hours (Seconds) Come and Gone?
- China's Role as Lender Alters Dynamics for United States
- Israel Going Green
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
- U.S. Stocks Rally for the Second Straight Week
- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- Hirschhorn: Risk-Averse Traders
- Roginsky: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Financial Reform
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- TV Series Inks Unique Deal For Fight
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Dollar General Trades Higher After Its IPO
- China: Low US Interest Rates Threaten Recovery
- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- White House Plans to Freeze Spending to Cut Deficit
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Court Rejects 'Clawbacks' for Alleged Stanford Victims
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- Tax Credit Sparking First-Time Home Sales: Realtors
- Investors Cut Back US Stocks for Bigger Growth Abroad
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
RSS FEED
CNBC Stock Blog
Text Size 
Options traffic is signaling some bearish expections for retail and multinationals in the coming months, according to one analyst.
Moves in options for S&P retail ETF [XRT
Loading...
()
] indicate that traders are looking to protect themselves against a drop in the sector, said Rebecca Darst on CNBC Wednesday.
"What this tells us is that at least in the minds of these option traders, they're looking into some downside heading into September," said Darst. "... We are seeing option traders positioning, perhaps, for getting back some of the gains we've seen over the past month in the retail space, but with a downside limit. We shouldn't, at least according to these trades, see a real test of the 52-week lows." (See her full comments in the video).
That negative sentiment also seems to extend to financials, she indicated.
"You can take this for what you will, but we have noticed some positioning, if not defensively, then certainly in favor of some limited upside momentum in the likes of McDonald's [MCD
Loading...
()
] in the December and January contracts," Darst said. (Check McDonald's options traffic here).
"Just to mention another multinational company, we normally don't see a lot of trading activity in the likes of something like Procter & Gamble [PG
Loading...
()
], but it did show up in our option-trading screens yesterday, this with heavy buying at the January 65 put strike, so, again, that could be some defensive positioning in those large multinationals. What I think is interesting in this respect is that traders are targeting December and January for those possible moves lower." (Check P&G options traffic here).
See Darst's full multinational comments here.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes