Pessimistic Player Targets Momenta Pharmaceuticals Put Options

  Today’s tickers:  RHT, XLF, MNTA, ODP, AA & CVBF RHT  - Red Hat, Inc. –  Shares of the software company are down 2.5% at $46.67 in the final hour of the trading session, but near-term options activity on the stock suggests investors are hoping for the stock to rally ahead of January expiration. Red Hat’s better-than-expected forecast for fourth-quarter profits of $0.21 to $0.22 a share, released during the company’s third-quarter earnings report after the close of trading yesterday, inspired a plethora of analyst upgrades and hikes in share price targets. Investors expecting shares to rebound in short order took advantage of the decline in premium on out-of-the-money calls, and purchased the majority of some 7,850 contracts exchanged at the January 2011 $48 strike today. It looks like bulls bought approximately 4,000 of the call options for an average premium of $0.87 apiece. Call buyers are prepared to make money should Red Hat’s shares rally 4.7% over the current price of $46.67 to surpass the average breakeven price of $48.87 by January expiration. Following earnings, the overall reading of options implied volatility on the world’s largest distributor of the open-source Linux operating system plunged 27.7% to 29.90% by 3:45pm. XLF  - Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF –  The purchase of a massive chunk of March 2011 contract put options on the financials SPDR ETF appears to be the work of a cautiously optimistic options strategist hedging a large position in the underlying shares. Shares in the XLF, an exchange-traded fund designed to track the performance of the Financial Select Sector of the S&P 500 Index, are up 0.90% to stand at $15.95 as of 3:45pm in New York. The investor appears to have established a delta neutral hedge, buying 1,500,000 shares of XLF, and picking up 50,000 protective puts at the March 2011 $15 strike for a premium of $0.39 per contract on a 0.30 delta. It seems the trader is positioning for continued bullish movement in the price of XLF shares, but opting to shell out…