​Weekly Bulletin: Nov 17-21

This week ended with some interesting combo trades seen on Apple, while call options in the SPY where the most traded Friday as investors chased upside following earlier fly trades. Hedge funds and institutional investors were also seen considering buying puts on the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund, while selling puts on the United States Oil Fund, as the price ratio between the two underlyings sits at one of the largest distances from its trend line in five years. Hedge funds, asset managers and institutional investors are also looking at vanilla call options and quanto call options on the JPX-Nikkei 400, as well as outperformance options on the index against the Nikkei 225, as the market prepares for the launch of futures trading on the JPX-Nikkei 400. Meanwhile, Asset manager Laffitte Capital Management is seeing increased opportunities looking at strategies that play the spread between single stock dividend futures and index dividend futures in Europe following the correction in the equity markets last month. Laffitte specializes in liquid absolute return funds. We also talk to a number of pension funds this week, getting their thoughts on the recent spate of smart beta indices that have flooded the market of late. One pension fund also dishes out on hybrid option strategies and their pricing problem. In Asia, we also take a peek at the affect the Hong Kong Shanghai Connect program has had on the equity markets there.