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Schaeffer's Option Activity Alert: Hartford Financial Services Punishes Bulls with Poor Earnings

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^{Published in Business and Finance on Friday, February 6th 2009 at 9:16 GMT, Last Modified on 2009-02-06 09:17:15 by Market Wire}  

CINCINNATI--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--Despite the stock's 80% slide during the past 52 weeks, bullishly oriented calls were the option of choice ahead of earnings for Hartford Financial Services (NYSE: HIG). During the past 5 days, traders on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) bought to open 18,292 calls on HIG, compared to just 9,618 puts. The equity's 5-day call/put ratio on the ISE is 1.90, with optimistic option volume more than doubling its pessimistic counterpart.

Looking back over the past 10 trading days, HIG has garnered an ISE call/put ratio of 1.78. As with the shorter-term reading, this ratio indicates that traders have shown a recent preference for calls over puts.

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