Option Leaders Midday Thursday

Your intraday options trading update.

VOLUME LEADERS

Volume leaders at lunch Eastern are some of the usual suspects along with some up and comers. Two Citigroup (NYSE: C) calls are at the top � C Apr11 4.5 and C May11 4.5 Call. About 330,000 contracts between them. Also seeing volume is the PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (NYSE: UUP) with its UUP Jun11 21 Put up a penny to $0.15 with a little over 100,000 contracts traded. Other strikes in the top 10 include a Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) May11 12 Put with about 65,000 contracts trading, and the iShares Russell 2000 Index (NYSE: IWM) May11 84 Put down 40 cents to $4.12 and trading 50,429 contracts.

OPEN INTEREST

Top 10 are all Citigroup, eight calls and two puts. So when is the reverse split?

STOCKS � BIGGEST DAILY CHANGE IN OPTIONS VOLUME

Among the top 10 making waves is the Investment Technology Group (NYSE:ITG) with 1,527 options traded, up about 4,500%, primarily on the put side with the brokerage and financial technology firm trading down 0.19 to $18.20

Flowers Foods (NYSE:FLO) is baking some interesting options trading with 2,115 traded, a rise of more than 1,700%. Puts are popular and FLO is down 0.13 to $26.42.

No toying with Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT) as the stock rises 1% to $25.12 and options volume rises 1,464% to 34,990 contracts. Trader apparently rolled an April position into July, according to optionsMONSTER.

Others among� the usual option wallflowers breaking out this a.m.� include are Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) with about 30,000 options trading, a rise of 549%. Stock is up 6.57. Also Talbots (NYSE: TLB), one of those retailers finding favor. Options volume is up 386% to 11,752 contracts, as TLB jumps nearly 25% to $5.98.

STOCKS � HIGH OPTION VOLUME

Dueling S&Ps take the top two spots here with SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) garnering 90.7 million in volume in the underlying and the options seeing about 815,000 contracts. Options on the S&P 500 Index Options (CBOE: SPX) sees 215,616 contracts traded. CBOE scores another with its Volatility IndexVIX down 1.03 and generating 212,305 in volume. Others in the top 10 include Bank of America with about 205,000 options trades, the iShares Russell 2000 (NYSE: IWM) with 160,000 options, and Micron Tech (NASDAQ: MU) with 68,564 options traded.

Find more option analysis and trading ideas at Option Trading Strategies.