Sea's Options: A Look at What the Big Money is Thinking

Investors with a lot of money to spend have taken a bearish stance on Sea SE.

And retail traders should know.

We noticed this today when the positions showed up on publicly available options history that we track here at Benzinga.

Whether these are institutions or just wealthy individuals, we don't know. But when something this big happens with SE, it often means somebody knows something is about to happen.

Today, Benzinga's options scanner spotted 10 options trades for Sea.

This isn't normal.

The overall sentiment of these big-money traders is split between 30% bullish and 40%, bearish.

Out of all of the options we uncovered, there was 1 put, for a total amount of $62,000, and 9, calls, for a total amount of $3,168,443.

What's The Price Target?

After evaluating the trading volumes and Open Interest, it's evident that the major market movers are focusing on a price band between $60.0 and $100.0 for Sea, spanning the last three months.

Volume & Open Interest Development

In terms of liquidity and interest, the mean open interest for Sea options trades today is 2706.88 with a total volume of 6,607.00.

In the following chart, we are able to follow the development of volume and open interest of call and put options for Sea's big money trades within a strike price range of $60.0 to $100.0 over the last 30 days.

Sea Option Activity Analysis: Last 30 Days

Noteworthy Options Activity:

About Sea

Sea operates Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce company, Shopee, in terms of gross merchandise value and number of transactions. Sea started as a gaming business, Garena, but in 2015 expanded into e-commerce, which is now the main growth driver. Shopee is a hybrid C2C and B2C marketplace platform operating in eight core markets. Indonesia accounts for 35% of GMV, with the rest split mainly among Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. For Garena, Free Fire was the most downloaded game in January 2022 and accounted for 74% of gaming revenue in 2021. Sea's third business, SeaMoney, provides lending and we foresee it becoming a larger part of the entire busines in the long term as its loan book has grown to $3.5 billion in 2024.

After a thorough review of the options trading surrounding Sea, we move to examine the company in more detail. This includes an assessment of its current market status and performance.

Present Market Standing of Sea

• Trading volume stands at 5,108,266, with SE's price up by 3.64%, positioned at $81.69.
• RSI indicators show the stock to be may be overbought.
• Earnings announcement expected in 85 days.

Expert Opinions on Sea

5 market experts have recently issued ratings for this stock, with a consensus target price of $83.8.

• Maintaining their stance, an analyst from B of A Securities continues to hold a Buy rating for Sea, targeting a price of $84.
• Consistent in their evaluation, an analyst from Wedbush keeps a Outperform rating on Sea with a target price of $84.
• Consistent in their evaluation, an analyst from Benchmark keeps a Buy rating on Sea with a target price of $94.
• Maintaining their stance, an analyst from Citigroup continues to hold a Buy rating for Sea, targeting a price of $80.
• Consistent in their evaluation, an analyst from B of A Securities keeps a Buy rating on Sea with a target price of $77.

Options are a riskier asset compared to just trading the stock, but they have higher profit potential. Serious options traders manage this risk by educating themselves daily, scaling in and out of trades, following more than one indicator, and following the markets closely.

If you want to stay updated on the latest options trades for Sea, Benzinga Pro gives you real-time options trades alerts.