My bad. I meant that when most commentators refer to a put/call ratio, that's the ratio, the intraday CBOE ratio of puts to calls traded. You're right, that indicates nothing about the number of new puts or calls opened. The theory is that on any given day, new openings are marginal given pre-existing OI.
The thesis I was referencing(hedging longs with puts) is held by commentators who have been speculating that institutional investors are hedging their long positions in stocks and indices with index puts. The fact that there were more index calls than puts shows that speculative call activity is more powerful a force than hedging put activity at this moment.
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