relax all your longs!, page-35

I agree big money pushing stock price down for options expiration...many high volume stocks on the market, such as Lynas, have millions of shares traded using options by big firms. Often they play both sides of the fence on a particular stock at once using both puts and calls so as to get profits from movement in one direction, but while protecting against movements in the other direction. Because it is option money, they are leveraging the stock dramatically for pennies on the dollar, so the influence of option money on a stock is tremendously magnified as a percent of volume. So when a lot of money is riding on a downside prediction, even if only by 20 cents from where it was when the option was purchased or sold, these folks can take extra measures at the last day of options expiration to make sure the day closes below the option target, if their bet was in fact net short.