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Hewlett-Packard delivers rapid payday

Fast money traders rang the bell in Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday.

Early in the session, optionMONSTER's trade scanners detected unusual activity in the November 12 weekly calls. The contracts, which expire at the end of trading today, found buyers out of the gate for just $0.05.

The stock just sat there for a bit, but then the momentum kicked in. HPQ worked higher and those calls would inflate to $0.15 and then $0.21, letting those investors triple and quadruple their money in the space of just two hours!

More than 15,000 of those 12 weeklies would trade in the session, slightly above previous open interest f 14,675 contracts.

Calls lock in the price investors must pay to buy shares, so they can generate significant leverage from even a small move. The drawback is that they can expire worthless if a rally doesn't occur. In the case of Wednesday's buyers, the lifespan was very short at just two sessions.

HPQ ended the day up 1.96 percent to $11.94. It had plunged 12 percent in the previous session after lowering guidance and admitting that it lost billions on the acquisition of a British software maker. The once-mighty tech company has been struggling against weak PC sales, and has lost more than half its value since the beginning of 2012.

Total option volume in the name was 5 times greater than average.



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