Witching Looms, but Options Traders See a Bounceback Ahead

It's not often you hear this, but here goes: If you don't know what you're doing, don't buy options today.

This Friday is "double-witch" expiration -- meaning that both stock options and index options are set to expire simultaneously. The final witching hour of trading on any Friday expiration can get hairy, as program traders and big institutional investors adjust their portfolios with massive chunks of capital in the underlying stocks.

Volatility Index Today % Change 30.14 +10.24 Source: ILX

And a hairy beast emerged this morning with a Greenspan-inspired scare that brought the Dow Jones Industrial Average close to cracking the 10,000 mark on the way down. ...