GameStop shares may be up 350%, but investors love the 50-cent options

Wild gyrations in GameStop Corp shares have roiled Wall Street all week with plenty of chatter about every conceivable angle, but some traders have honed in on one question:

For a stock that has rocketed about 350% in five sessions, why is the most hotly traded options contract at the 50-cent level?

Put options that pay out if GameStop’s shares fall below 50 cents within a year were the most popular options tied to the stock on Thursday, with nearly 33,000 contracts changing hands. The video game retailer’s stock closed down 44% at $193.60.

Some analysts said traders may be buying these puts in conjunction with other options contracts to take advantage of the rise in the stock’s implied volatility — an options-based measure of how much traders expect the shares to gyrate in coming days.