Response from option traders has been interesting, not least in the October contract, where a trader appears to have played against the "easy-fix" rumors by buying a long 8,870-lot put spread between strikes 2.50 and 5.00. This trade was entered for a 25-cent debit, creating an initial break-even of $4.75 - requiring an almost disastrous $10 drop. The trader stands to gain as much as $2.25 -- 9 times the money at risk -- if Lehman shares make a cataclysmic drop but don't break below the $2.50 level. Given that options are pricing in only about a 3% chance of Lehman shares dropping below $5 by Oct. 17 -- and virtually no chance of a bust of $2.50 -- it's clear that this trader is using this 25-cent position as a long-shot wager.

In another October play in Lehman, traders may have sold 27-strike calls at 22 cents apiece in order to fund a long collar between strikes 12.50 and 20 -- a protective play on an underlying stock position that would otherwise cost 33 cents to put on. In this case, the trader would have bought the put at the 12.50 strike and sold the call at 20, with that short call declaring a limit to any upside in which this trader can participate. This too would seem to suggest a very muted outlook for Lehman shares, even if a bid is forthcoming.

Elsewhere, we observed a few large-scale call-side trades in tech stocks. Options activity in Sun Microsystems -- trading 0.60% higher at $10.00 -- caught our attention, as a trader bought an 11,000-lot long call position at the January 12.50 line for 53 cents. About an hour later, a trader sold a 10,000-lot position in 12.50 puts for $2.90. Both of these strategies may be interpreted as bullish on the underlying share price, as Sun shares have not traded at this level since June.

We observed similar call-side position in Dell . Shares are down 0.48% at $25.09, but they've perked up some 38% since bottoming out on April 14. Roughly half of today's active volume in Dell options is centered in January 30 calls, where 10,000 lots traded to the middle of the market at 67 cents. Based on the premiums paid, we're surmising that the calls were bought in a bullish wager that Dell would see shares back at levels not seen since October 2007.

Shares in Warren Buffett favorite Coca-Cola are up 1.3% to $54.20, pacing gains in the Dow today. Murmurings of a global slowdown in recent sessions have sparked some market investors to call for positioning away from large multinationals with heavy European exposure, and option activity over the past week has shown some signs of traders positioning more defensively in December/January contracts in some multinational names.

It's in this light that the action in Coca-Cola is interesting, as it appears a trader entered a 7,000-lot calendar put spread, selling 50-strike puts in the January 2010 for $4.00 and buying the same position in the January '09 contract for $1.60. Along with a $2.40 initial credit, the trader gets some defensive cover against a 7% pullback between now and mid-January.