Caterpillar Options Spike on Share Movement

Caterpillar is seeing heavy options activity as its stock trades moderately higher Wednesday.

Calls outnumber puts by a 3-1 ratio and are concentrated at the February 33 strike, where contracts were bought for $0.77, $0.80, and $0.81. Some May 40 calls also traded for $0.88, according to OptionMonster's real-time tracking systems.

  • Who Owns CAT Shares?

CAT stock is up some 3 percent to about $31 this afternoon on fairly strong volume, but the construction equipment giant has been steadily declining since the first trading day of the year when it closed at $46.91.

The shares were hit particularly hard after Caterpillar released a dismal earnings report on Monday of last week, which had been preceded by bearish options action.

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Global Construction Cos.:

Deere

ABB

Illinois Tool Works

CNH Global

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Pete Najarian is a professional investor, CNBC contributor, regular co-host of CNBC's "Fast Money" and co-founder of OptionMonster.com.

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