Looking beyond the big moves

Big numbers tend to grab the most eyeballs in the financial markets—big price swings, big positions—but longtime traders know the value of keeping an eye on stocks that aren’t necessary putting up gaudy statistics.

For example, on Wednesday morning when the S&P 500 was down a little more than 1%—and many individual stocks were down much more—asset manager Northern Trust (NTRS) was trading modestly lower on lighter-than-average volume:

Like most stocks, NTRS had pulled back in recent days as tariff uncertainty dominated market headlines. At Wednesday’s low of $102.40, the stock was down 10.7% from the nearly two-year intraday high it hit in early February. Overall, though, there was nothing exceptional about the downswing, either in terms of its magnitude or day-to-day volume. And on Wednesday, the stock never fell as much as the SPX, even though it later retreated from its morning highs.

However, there was one bit of unusual trade activity on Wednesday, although it may have slipped past many traders. Early in the trading session, NTRS was on top of the LiveAction scan for high put-call ratios with 371 puts trading for every call:

On the surface, the combination of high relative put volume and a stock sell-off may have appeared to have a bearish tint. But in addition to the fact that the day’s absolute put volume was modest, the options chain showed the “biggest” trades occurred in the March $105 and $110 puts, which also happened to be the two contracts with the highest open interest (OI):

While yesterday’s put activity could have been a case of traders opening new put positions in a (recently) declining stock, because the OI was higher than the volume, it’s also possible traders who had previously purchased these options were covering them after the stock’s sharp decline this week. As it turns out, 1,521 of the $110 puts traded on February 26, when they closed at $3.50. On Wednesday, they traded as high as $7.80.

While trade activity like this can sometimes provide insights that aren’t apparent in the stock’s price, the catch is that OI data always has a one-day lag. In other words, traders would have had to wait until Thursday to know whether Wednesday’s activity meant people were getting out of these puts (a day-over-day OI decrease) or getting into them (a day-over-day OI increase).

Today’s numbers include (all times ET): Employment Report (8:30 a.m.), Fed Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business 2025 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum (12:30 p.m.).

Today’s earnings include: Genesco (GCO), Janux Therapeutics (JANX).

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