​Daily Bulletin: Tuesday Feb. 17

Flow in call options on the HSCEI was the dominant trend during Asia trading today as Chinese New Year approaches. The opening of trading in futures and options on Eurex was delayed on Tuesday morning due to technical issues, resuming shortly after 9:20am Central European Time. In the U.S., Apple and SPY were in focus, with the latter seeing significant Feb 204 put flow. In today’s coverage, we report on investors taking profits on the Eurostoxx Banks (SX7E) leg of SX7E vs. Eurostoxx 50 (SX5E) ratio call switch trades. The trades were popular at the beginning of 2015 to take advantage of the downward trajectory in realized beta of E.U. banks in a bullish scenario relative to the implied volatility levels. Elsewhere, an ex-single stock volatility trader at Nomura is set to join Citigroup, while week-ending Apple options accounted for near 10% of flow across U.S. exchanges during midday on Tuesday. In our market roundup, we provide details of Société Générale Prime Servicesacquiring a minority stake in GMEX Group, and the announcement of a new unit class of UBS MAP ETF tradeable on Deutsche Borse.