Unusual Options Activity in Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI)

Today, January 12, 2022, among the underlying components of the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in Kinder Morgan, which opened at $17.71.

• There has been significant or noteworthy volume on the LEAPS (long expiration equity anticipation securities) for January 20th, 2023.  Approximately $3.7 million in bullish premium has been traded on this chain, with 9,883 of the requisite volume as ask-side orders, compared to 1,957 at the bid.

LEAPS are options contracts with longer-dated expirations, typically a year or more out, and a more affordable solution than outright owning 100 shares of a stock.

These orders come after Daniel Foelber from The Motley Fool inquired: “Energy Was the S&P 500's Best-Performing Sector in 2021. Can the Outperformance Continue?”.

74.85% of the premium traded at the $30,000 levels are in bullish bets, with $4.1 million in call premium.  Furthermore, the $5,000 premium levels are in bullish bets at 68.28%, with over $4.4 million in bullish premium traded.

To view more information about KMI's daily flow breakdown, click here to visit unusualwhales.com.

Unusual Options Activity in BP (BP)

Again in the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in BP (BP), which opened today at $31.13.

• There were 3,000 contracts traded on the $18.5 strike put call option, dated for February 11th, 2022, bought to open at the ask.
• These trades were detected using the new Unusual Whales Hottest Chains & Tickers panel, seen here.

A tip from the flow: Trades appended with a briefcase emoji can be intuited as bought or sold to open. This determination is made if the size of the trade was greater than the chain's open interest.  Only trades that can be positively identified as being bought or sold to open will be marked as such (with the briefcase).

Be mindful! Trades without the briefcase emoji might still have been bought or sold to open!

These orders come after Ron Bousso and Sabrina Valle from Reuters reported that this is “the year Big Oil starts to become Small Oil”.

81.6% of the premium traded at these premium levels are in bullish bets, with 71.8% as ask-side orders, and 82.2% are in call premiums.

To view more information about BP's flow breakdown, click here to visit unusualwhales.com.

Unusual Options Activity in Cloudflare, Inc. (NET)

Finally, and again in the NYSE, we saw unusual or noteworthy options trading volume and activity in Cloudflare, Inc. (NET), which opened today at $117.00.

• There were 2,000 contracts traded on the $134 strike call option, dated for January 28th, 2022, bought to open at $2.03 with a bid-ask spread of $1.56 to $2.03.

These orders come after Anders Bylund from The Motley Fool explained:

“Here's Why Cloudflare, Elastic, and Fiverr Plunged in December”

Additionally, these orders came in as floor trades:  Floor traders work on the floor of an exchange.  When a floor trader executes a trade, exclusively for their own account, it must be reported on an exchange by the "floor" tag.

Click here to read the Unusual Whales report on floor traders' performance.

It must be noted that the volume overshadows any open interest on this chain, and that the bid-ask is about as low as it ever historically has been.

To view more information about NET's flow breakdown, click here to visit unusualwhales.com.

Have you read the the Unusual Whales Congressional Trading in 2021 Report yet?

Here is the TL;DR:

• Hundreds of millions of dollars have been exchanged on the stock market by our elected officials in 2021 alone
• In just equities, Congress bought and sold nearly $290 million throughout the year.
• In 2021, Congress beat the market!
• This report shows which sectors were preferred by each party and branch, oftentimes huge trade amounts could be attributed to one or two members.
• Big legislative events (such as the Infrastructure Bill getting passed by the Senate) were often preceded by politicians trading in the sectors affected. There were tons of unusual trades where politicians made millions of dollars.
• Congress has 45 days to disclose trades to the public, sometimes they are late and you can see a list of late disclosures here!
• Some politicians held securities in the sectors they vocally expressed support for (such as Senators holding cryptocurrencies while drafting crypto regulations).
• The report highlights many of these and other unusual instances!

Go check out the full report here, and you are encouraged to read through and share your thoughts on Twitter and the Discord community.