Credit Suisse Bulls Bet on the Bank

By Pete Najarian, co-founder of OptionMonster

NEW YORK (OptionMonster) -- Credit Suisse (CS) options have lit up our tracking systems before, and Thursday the bulls returned to the banking name.

Traders had previously purchased the February 25 and March 25 calls when CS was around $22. Thursday buyers stepped into the June 31 calls, and multiple large blocks stood out. The contracts first priced for 60 cents, but more appeared in decent size for 70 cents and 75 cents, according to OptionMonster's real-time monitoring programs.

Those calls lock in the price investors must pay for the stock. If it rallies in coming weeks, they will earn big leveraged gains. The February calls bought earlier in the month, for instance, tripled in less than two weeks. If Credit Suisse pushes lower, however, losses will pile up quickly.

Options require much less capital than owning the stock. More than 10,000 contracts traded in the June 31s, the equivalent of about 1 million shares at a fraction of the cost.

The European bank ended the session up 0.38% at $26.71.

More than 16,000 options traded in the name overall Thursday versus a daily average around 2,900. Almost 14,000 of those were calls, a reflection of the session strongly bullish sentiment.

Najarian has no positions in CS.

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