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Daily Commentary for S&P 500 Companies   S&P 500 Options Alerts

Trading Update for Health Net (HNT)
Posted on 03/10/2010

HNT options saw interesting call activity today. A total of 156 put and 8,181 call contracts were traded raising a low Put/Call volume alert. Today's traded Put/Call ratio is 0.02. There were 52.44 calls traded for each put contract.

Put/Call ratio is often used to measure investor sentiment, the ratio serves as a predictor of investor behavior. A high Put/Call ratio suggests that the investor sentiment is bearish and that investors expect the underlying stock to decrease in value. In contrast, a low Put/Call ratio suggests that the investor sentiment is bullish and that the underlying stock is expected to increase in value. Unusual volume provides reliable clues that the stock is expected to make a move.

Shares of HNT closed at $24.35 in the previous trading session and opened today at $24.29. Health Net settled the day up $0.23 to $24.58 in the trading session. The day's trading range is between $24.12 and $24.99 respectively. On the volume side, 1,905,143 shares were traded which is greater than the average volume of 1,291,900 shares. HNT is trading above the 50 day moving average and higher than the 200 day moving average. The stock's 52 week low is $11.32 and 52 week high is $26.73.

by Sasha Gelf
Options Analytics Group