Banks Open 2022 With A Big Bang

The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE:XLF) rose more than 1% to settle Monday’s trading at $39.53.

On CNBC’s “Options Action,” Mike Khouw of Optimize Advisors said there was a lot of bullish activity in financials on Monday.

For the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund, calls outpaced puts by around 2.5:1 on above average volumes trades, Khouw mentioned. He added that this was “largely the result of the purchase of 20,000 of the February 41/44 strike call spreads” for an average price of 41 cents per contract.

This trader is “betting that XLF could rise somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% to 10% by the third Friday in February,” Khouw said.