Bearish Toward Retailers Despite Strong Black Friday

Retail options are extremely active in today's session -- J.C. Penney (JCP - commentary - Cramer's Take) shares are up nearly 11% to $20.59 after the company reported strong Black Friday sales. Still, the company's same-store sales for the month of November fell 11.9%. Traders appear to have taken today's increase in share price to buy into puts at the December $17.50 strike, where some 94% of the volume was bought on the offer, according to data from Trade Alerts.

Share price upside extended to Sears Holdings (SHLD - commentary - Cramer's Take), where shares rose 8.5% to $40.87. However, put volume has the upper hand in afternoon trading, outperforming that of calls by a factor of 1.6. Traders sought opening positions in March $45 puts today; these positions are in the money by more than $4 but at $15.70 per contract, requiring a break to $29.30 for Sears Holdings ($2.50 above the 52-week low) to break even.

Implied volatility in Sears Holdings options is off nearly 100 percentage points from its high of 210% back on November 19. It was during that November period that Sears Holdings shares set their 52-week low in the upper mid-$20's, and today's trader apparently feels that a test of those levels is worth protecting against in the spring contract.

The most conspicuous retail positioning today is in the SPDR S&P Retail (XRT - commentary - Cramer's Take), which is up 5.5% to $18.72. But traders appear to be rolling out large-block positions at the December $18 and $23 put strikes into the January contract at strikes $18, $19 and $20.

Our contact Fred Ruffy at Trade Alert noted earlier today that some of the trades might be occurring in concert with stock positions, but our read of the tape doesn't indicate any specifically tied transactions at present. We can safely conclude that the sentiment read is a defensive one -- today's put activity represents 14 times the normal level of activity in this retail basket.

Finally, shares in the U.S. Oil Fund (USF - commentary - Cramer's Take) broke to a new 52-week low with today's near-6% slump to $35.85 today -- most active today have been the December $37 puts, where the $3.60 asking price represents a 47% premium to yesterday's levels and implies traders are aggressively locking in a price to sell the commodity-indexed fund by December 19.

While the put position is technically in-the-money, the cost of the position requires another $2 and change below current levels to break even. Total volume of 9,600 lots at this strike compares to open interest of only around 11,500, which suggests traders may be entering fresh positions. Implied volatility has shown an upward trend over the past week and a half, up 16% during that period.

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At the time of publication, Darst had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

Rebecca Engmann Darst is the Portfolio Manager for TheStreet.com�s Options Alerts Portfolio newsletter and an equity options analyst for RealMoney Each Thursday at 6:30 a.m. EST, she delivers the early-morning lowdown on option volume and sector trends on CNBC's "Squawk Box." Prior to her work in the equity options market, she spent seven years in Scandinavia as a Copenhagen-based chief reporter for a European Commission news service, correspondent for Spanish daily El Mundo and Radio Netherlands, followed by stints at Nordea Bank and Saxo Bank.