$ORCL bulls quadruple money intraday

Upside option positions are seeing significant intraday gains as Oracle (ORCL) charges ahead today.

Less than 40 minutes into the session today, Jul. 7, Market Rebellion’s Unusual Activity Service detected the purchase of 15,000 Weekly $85 calls, expiring this Friday, for $0.25 to $0.58 with shares at $83.35. Open interest in the strike before the trade occurred was just 1,406 contracts, showing that this was a new position.

Those calls have sold for as much as $2.35 so far today, more than 4 times their purchase prices. The stock rose 4.45% in the same time frame, showing how options can far outperform moves in their underlying shares.

Long calls lock in the price where investors can buy a stock, letting them position for a rally at limited cost with the potential for significant leverage. They carry less risk than owning shares because the most that can be lost is the price of the options no matter how far the stock might fall.

ORCL was last up by 3.91% to $86.33 today. The cloud-computing company is next estimated to report earnings on Sep. 15.