Looking At Morgan Stanley's Recent Unusual Options Activity

Someone with a lot of money to spend has taken a bullish stance on Morgan Stanley MS.

And retail traders should know.

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

Whether this is an institution or just a wealthy individual, we don't know. But when something this big happens with MS, it often means somebody knows something is about to happen.

So how do we know what this whale just did?

Today, Benzinga's options scanner spotted 11 uncommon options trades for Morgan Stanley.

This isn't normal.

The overall sentiment of these big-money traders is split between 63% bullish and 36%, bearish.

Out of all of the special options we uncovered, 7 are puts, for a total amount of $688,074, and 4 are calls, for a total amount of $168,970.

What's The Price Target?

Taking into account the Volume and Open Interest on these contracts, it appears that whales have been targeting a price range from $65.0 to $100.0 for Morgan Stanley over the last 3 months.

Volume & Open Interest Development

In terms of liquidity and interest, the mean open interest for Morgan Stanley options trades today is 3503.7 with a total volume of 9,004.00.

In the following chart, we are able to follow the development of volume and open interest of call and put options for Morgan Stanley's big money trades within a strike price range of $65.0 to $100.0 over the last 30 days.

Morgan Stanley Option Volume And Open Interest Over Last 30 Days

Options Call Chart

Biggest Options Spotted:

Symbol PUT/CALL Trade Type Sentiment Exp. Date Strike Price Total Trade Price Open Interest Volume
MS PUT TRADE BEARISH 04/19/24 $80.00 $206.0K 166 418
MS PUT TRADE NEUTRAL 01/16/26 $65.00 $169.5K 2 300
MS PUT SWEEP BULLISH 09/20/24 $75.00 $154.5K 1.1K 300
MS PUT TRADE BULLISH 12/15/23 $65.00 $74.4K 626 1.5K
MS CALL SWEEP BULLISH 01/17/25 $100.00 $63.5K 11.9K 246

Where Is Morgan Stanley Standing Right Now?

  • With a volume of 1,871,825, the price of MS is down -0.9% at $82.28.
  • RSI indicators hint that the underlying stock may be approaching oversold.
  • Next earnings are expected to be released in 22 days.

What The Experts Say On Morgan Stanley:

  • Oppenheimer has decided to maintain their Outperform rating on Morgan Stanley, which currently sits at a price target of $100.
  • RBC Capital downgraded its action to Sector Perform with a price target of $90
  • HSBC downgraded its action to Buy with a price target of $99

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 Morgan Stanley, Benzinga Pro gives you real-time options trades alerts.

Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
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Posted In: OptionsMarketsBZI-UOA
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