Marriott is seeing heavy call activity — even as its stock trades lower today.
MAR's 20-day average daily options volume is 3,356, but today it has traded nearly 23,300 contracts halfway through the session, according to OptionMonster's real-time tracking systems. More than 11,000 contracts changes hands in the first 30 minutes of trading alone, against just 942 puts.
Oddly enough, those morning calls were hopping when the stock was down $0.20, but the shares have cut those losses to $0.06 on the day. MAR is almost flat on the session, off by 0.31 percent to $19.13 in afternoon trading.
Monday's activity has been concentrated at the April 20 and May 22.50 strikes, where calls are well above open interest. The names that come up most often as potential buyout candidates is getting longer, and MAR is on the list.
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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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