Someone with a lot of money to spend has taken a bearish stance on Occidental Petroleum OXY .

And retail traders should know.

We noticed this today when the big position showed up on publicly available options history that we track here at Benzinga.

Whether this is an institution or just a wealthy individual, we don't know. But when something this big happens with OXY, it often means somebody knows something is about to happen.

So how do we know what this whale just did?

Today, Benzinga's options scanner spotted 10 uncommon options trades for Occidental Petroleum.

This isn't normal.

The overall sentiment of these big-money traders is split between 20% bullish and 80%, bearish.

Out of all of the special options we uncovered, 5 are puts, for a total amount of $403,040, and 5 are calls, for a total amount of $182,210.

Taking into account the Volume and Open Interest on these contracts, it appears that whales have been targeting a price range from $20.0 to $70.0 for Occidental Petroleum over the last 3 months.

In terms of liquidity and interest, the mean open interest for Occidental Petroleum options trades today is 6410.0 with a total volume of 2,170.00.

In the following chart, we are able to follow the development of volume and open interest of call and put options for Occidental Petroleum's big money trades within a strike price range of $20.0 to $70.0 over the last 30 days.

Symbol PUT/CALL Trade Type Sentiment Exp. Date Strike Price Total Trade Price Open Interest Volume OXY PUT SWEEP BEARISH 09/30/22 $66.00 $182.5K 631 330 OXY PUT SWEEP BULLISH 01/20/23 $57.50 $93.9K 4.6K 200 OXY PUT TRADE BEARISH 10/21/22 $60.00 $50.0K 8.9K 205 OXY PUT TRADE BEARISH 01/20/23 $50.00 $45.9K 11.7K 200 OXY CALL TRADE BEARISH 09/16/22 $70.00 $45.0K 13.8K 1.0K

Options are a riskier asset compared to just trading the stock, but they have higher profit potential. Serious options traders manage this risk by educating themselves daily, scaling in and out of trades, following more than one indicator, and following the markets closely.

If you want to stay updated on the latest options trades for Occidental Petroleum, Benzinga Pro gives you real-time options trades alerts.

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