Companies seeing a skew towards puts in the previous session: Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER), Bank of America (BAC), Wachovia (WB), General Motors (GM), Costco Wholesale (COST), Vulcan Materials (VMC), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Wells Fargo & Co (WFC), Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Elan, plc (ELN), Terex Corp. (TEX), Frontier Oil (FTO), American Express (AXP), Broadcom (BRCM), Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), CARMAX INC (KMX), Altera Corp. (ALTR), Carnival (CCL), Boston Scientific (BSX), DryShips Inc. (DRYS), Lamar Advertising (LAMR), ASSURED GUARANTY (AGO), Intel Corp. (INTC), Edwards Lifesciences (EW), Dell (DELL).

Companies seeing a skew towards calls in the previous session: Genentech (DNA), DIAMONDS Trust Series I (DIA), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Anheuser-Busch Companies (BUD), VMware, Inc. (VMW), Medtronic (MDT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), Harris Corp. (HRS), Crocs, Inc. (CROX), AT&T Corp. (T), Merck (MRK), EMC Corp. (EMC), Coach (COH), CIENA Corp. (CIEN), Chesapeake Energy (CHK), Celanese Corporation (CE), QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM), Jabil Circuit (JBL), Goldcorp Incorporated (GG), Schlumberger N.V. (SLB), JOHNSON & JOHNSON (JNJ), Coeur d'Alene Mines (CDE), Celgene Corp. (CELG), eBay Inc (EBAY).

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