Bulls Target Priceline

In an intuitive seasonal play, a bullish trader on Priceline (PCLN - commentary - Cramer's Take) entered a 3,750-lot call spread in the January contract between strikes $60 and $70, a position that would otherwise have set him or her back some $4.18 per contract. In this case, true to Priceline's low-cost mantra, the trader further defrayed the cost of the spread by selling January $45 puts at $1.91, leaving a net debit of $2.27 that helps this trader limit the upside breakeven to about 3% above current levels. The concentration of volume here represents 5 times the normal level of activity seen in Priceline's options.

Out-of-the-money put spreads in appliance maker Whirlpool (WHR - commentary - Cramer's Take) have driven overall option volume to triple the normal level. The concentration on contracts to sell Whirlpool is particularly canny today, with the stock up more than 8%, at $40.71, and implied volatility at 77%, showing a shortfall below the 98% historic reading on the stock.

Today's big trade looks to have been a 5,000-lot bear put spread in the December contract between strikes $30 and $35, with the trader buying the upper strike and selling the lower for a net debit of 70 cents. The $34.30 breakeven on this trade requires another 15% downside for Whirlpool shares over the next two weeks. That's quite a draw in a very brief period of time, but with a risk/reward profile of 6 to 1, the potential payoff represents a chance worth taking for a bearish investor.

Whirlpool shares set their closing 52-week low of $30.19 back on Nov. 21, so a potential for massive short-term swings has already been demonstrated. The trader of this bear put spread, however, believes that the Nov. 21 support level will remain intact.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM - commentary - Cramer's Take) continues to be a popular target for option traders, this amid a near-5% gain for the shares today, to $31.72. An eye-catching transaction today was a 2-by-1 put spread in the front-month, in which a trader sold 5,000 December $22.50 puts at 46 cents per contract and bought 2,500 December $27.50 puts at $1.07 per contract, resulting in a slight debit of 15 cents per contract on the entire play. We ran this play through TradeKing's Profit & Loss Calculator and found, assuming that this is an opening position (which we cannot, strictly speaking, conclude), that the trader in this case breaks even at $31.42 and makes money all the way below the $25 level, breaking even again at $21.50.

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Know What You Own: Priceline, Whirlpool and JPMorgan Chase operate in the Internet service providers, appliances, and money center banks industries, respectively, and some of the other stocks in these fields include Internet Initiative Japan (IILI - commentary - Cramer's Take), SPX Corporation (SPW - commentary - Cramer's Take), Wells Fargo (WFC - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take). For more on the value of knowing what you own, visit TheStreet.com's Investing A-to-Z section.

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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.