Options Trading News

Barnes & Noble is drawing bearish option activity today after a new report showed that its Nook tablet is losing market share.

optionMONSTER's Depth Charge system shows that 2,127 September 12 puts traded in a strong buying pattern for $0.85 to $0.95. Open interest in the strike was 805 contracts at the start of the session, so this is new activity.

BKS is down 4.85 percent to $12.66 in afternoon trading. The bookseller gapped higher after receiving an investment from Microsoft in late April but has since given up all those gains and more. The company is scheduled to release quarterly results in the pre-market on Tuesday.

The Nook's share of the tablet market was just 1.9 percent as of the second quarter, down more than 25 percent in just three months, according to industry research firm IHS iSuppli in a report released yesterday. Barnes & Noble slashed Nook prices on Sunday to combat this rising competition, which Stifel Nicolaus cited in downgrading BKS to "hold" from "buy" today.

Our systems did not identify any stock trades tied to today's put buying, which could well be a straightforward bearish bet that the shares will fall more than 12 percent by expiration on Sept. 21.

Total option volume in the name is more than double its daily average. Puts outnumber calls by more than 3.5 to 1, a reflection of the session's bearish sentiment.