Rokky57, They bot the calls and sold the puts. It could be another 150,000 synthetic shares but you can not tell until you see the open interest on Monday. Yes I have a very large position that I would like to make money on by lending it. I want to encourage someone to short it by lending the shares. I can call them in or sell them anytime. The higher the short interest the better as I will then call them back unless the lend rate is 6% or more. I believe with the Lenovo, Vivo and Oppo news things will go my way.
“Is he betting on a downturn of IDCC price because he's paying a lot more for the Puts than the Calls?”
The person buying the puts and selling the calls is betting on a down turn in the stock price and evidently responsible for most of the short interest.
The person selling the puts and buying the calls wants the price to go up and could be trying to force a short squeeze the way I’m looking at it.
Who’s got the deeper pockets?
If the person was buying both the calls and the puts he’d be hoping for some volatility to try and make money. Not a very good way to do it since your already losing time premium as soon as you buy an option. Plus you have the bid/ask spread to deal with and would need a large buyer of options to get out of your position.
Looks like a couple players with large egos doing this.
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