Companies seeing a skew towards puts in the previous session: SPDR Trust Series I (SPY), Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Annaly Mortgage Management (NLY), FREDDIE MAC (FRE), Fannie Mae (FNM), Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER), AMR Corp. (AMR), Wachovia (WB), MORGAN STANLEY (MS), XM Satellite Radio (XMSR), AK Steel Holding (AKS), Bunge (BG), Time Warner (TWX), General Electric (GE), American Express (AXP), FORD MOTOR (F), Capital One Financial (COF), Continental Airlines (CAL), Centex Corp. (CTX), EOG Resources (EOG), State Street (STT), Southwest Airlines (LUV), Dick's Sporting Goods Inc (DKS), Apache Corp. (APA), J. Crew Group, Inc. (JCG).

Companies seeing a skew towards calls in the previous session: Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Bear Stearns Co. (BSC), Dendreon (DNDN), Apple (AAPL), ChevronTexaco (CVX), NATIONAL CITY (NCC), Microsoft (MSFT), Williams Companies (WMB), Research in Motion (RIMM), CSX Corp. (CSX), Chico's FAS (CHS), Crocs, Inc. (CROX), Target Corp. (TGT), MGM Mirage (MGM), ImClone Systems Incorporated (IMCL), Level 3 Communications (LVLT), Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX), Goldcorp Incorporated (GG), EMC Corp. (EMC), Cisco Systems (CSCO), CV Therapeutics (CVTX), Chesapeake Energy (CHK), Schlumberger N.V. (SLB), Baidu.com, Inc. (BIDU).

Note - I usually post this before the market open but I had a delay in accessing the data this morning. My apologies...

This filtered scan is based on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) buy-to-open data. It looks for stocks where the previous day's put volume on the ISE is at least twice as great as the call volume. It then sorts the stocks based on the put volume. Since this is buy-to-open data, this can be a good source for finding stocks where skepticism is emerging. Of particular interest to me would be situations where we see put activity on stocks that are still in intermediate-term uptrends. This would be a potentially encouraging sign from the contrarian perspective.

This filtered scan is based on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) buy-to-open data. It looks for stocks where the previous day's call volume on the ISE is at least twice as great as the put volume. It then sorts the stocks based on the call volume. Since this is buy-to-open data, this can be a good source for finding stocks where optimism is emerging. Of particular interest to me would be situations where we see call activity on stocks that are still in intermediate-term downtrends. This would be a potentially cautionary sign from the contrarian perspective