Bearish Traders Pounce on Infosys Options

OptionMonster co-founder Pete Najarian provides options picks Monday, Wednesday and Friday in TheStreet.com's Deep in the Money Calls newsletter.

David Russell, reporter for OptionMonster.

The bears have tasted the blood of Infosys(INFY Quote) and are moving in for the kill.

OptionMonster's tracking systems detected the purchase of 14,651 July 35 puts for $1.65 and the sale of 14,021 August 40 calls for 45 cents. The transaction resulted in a net debit of about $1.22 per put contract bought.

The move was almost identical to a similar trade last week by an investor who paid about 25 cents per put contract bought. The India-based technology outsourcing company had fallen about 4.5% since then, apparently giving the investor confidence to increase the bet against the outsourcing firm. The thesis for the trade may have been based upon the stock failing to break a resistance level on its chart at $37.50.

Infosys is up 2.2% to $35.05 in early afternoon trading. The transaction from this week and last week are instances of risk-reversal strategies, unhedged one-way bets that offer huge potential gains while carrying the risk of unlimited losses if the stock moves in the wrong direction.

Options volume in the name was more than seven times average today.