Option Skews - Relatively Heavy Put Activity on Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Walgreen Co

Here are the stocks that saw a bias toward put activity in the previous session. This filtered scan is based on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) buy-to-open data. It looks for stocks where the previous day's put volume on the ISE is at least twice as great as the call volume. It then sorts the stocks based on the put volume. Since this is buy-to-open data, this can be a good source for finding stocks where skepticism is emerging. Of particular interest to me would be situations where we see put activity on stocks that are still in intermediate-term uptrends. This would be a potentially encouraging sign from the contrarian perspective.

Companies included in today's scan results: SPDR Trust Series I (SPY), Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT), Monsanto Co (MON), Union Pacific Corp (UNP), Walgreen Co (WAG), Barrick Gold (ABX), Silver Standard Resources (SSRI), Iamgold Corp. (IAG), Seagate Technology (STX), IBM (IBM), Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. (ANR), Target Corp. (TGT), SanDisk Corp. (SNDK), Ambac Financial Group (ABK), Lexmark International (LXK), Norfolk Southern (NSC), Dow Chemical (DOW).

Just like yesterday, today's table shows relatively light activity. The buy-to-open put volume on the ISE was on the smaller side and fewer stocks met my scan criteria. Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Walgreen Co were two of the stocks that still saw relatively heavy activity.

• Unfortunately, the daily chart of Wal-Mart Stores shows little for me to get excited about. The shares remain trapped in the sideways coma we recently discussed.
• Walgreen, on the other hand, is a little more exciting. The daily chart shows a strong uptrend and a recent gap higher. Short-term support sits near 37.

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