Chart du jour – Out of the money Put pricing a harbinger of weakness this week?

The chart below is what is called Put:Call option skew – it is a measure of how much more expensive out of the money puts are relative to the same out of the money percent move calls – to many, this is the real “smart” money.

We can see that Puts are currently 1.8 times more expensive (RED LINE) than the calls and on each occassion in recent years this has coincided with a correction of varying magnitudes. Yet another warning sign for us to pay heed of…