WhatsTrading Recap - 01/20/2015

Seesaw action to start the week. The S&P 500 opened higher after the long weekend, only to erase the gains and drop 24.5 points from morning highs. The sell-off was orderly, however, and lacked volume. Since then, it's been a slow churn higher. With 90 minutes left to trade, the S&P if slat near 2,020 and 15.5 points from midday lows.
Treasury bonds continue to attract flows and the yield on the ten-year hit a morning low of 1.76%. It is now 1.8%. Crude oil continues to fuel gyrations and is now down $4.60 to $46.5. Gold remains a bright spot and is up $15 to $1292.
Market Vectors Gold Fund (GDX) sees heavy options action as the miners react to higher yellow metal prices. GDX is up 2.4% to multi-month highs of $22.70. Roughly 130,000 calls and 53,000 puts traded in GDX options.
Apple (AAPL) Weekly (1/23) 109 calls are the most active equity options of the day. 52,500 contracts traded, as some players in the options market seem to be looking for the stock to run up this week ahead of earnings, due out the following week on 1/27. AAPL is up 2.3% to $22.64 and helping the NASDAQ to a 20-point gain.
Profit reports will be driving a lot of action in the options market over the next few weeks and pre-earnings options activity is being seen in AMD, Applied Materials (AMAT), and Netflix (NFLX) Tuesday.
And VIX options are seeing heavy trading. Today is the last day to trade January options before a settlement value is computed tomorrow morning. 557,000 calls and 172,000 puts traded in the VIX pit. The index hit a morning low of 19.78, a midday high of 21.37, and is now down 1.12 to 19.83. Jan 20, 21 and 22 calls on the index are among today's most actives.