Groupon (GRPN) jumps 23% on acquisition rumors

Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) ended the week on a bang, as its shares are up almost 23 percent late on Friday afternoon.  This represented its greatest jump in six months and now rumors are swirling.

our GRPN Dec 22 '12   $5 Call

Last trade 0.25   Today's gain:  $0.20   or 400.00% 

Volume has stayed in its same trading range, reported Benzinga, but there’s speculation that there’s some short covering taking place, as there’s been as much as 12 percent of the float being sold short recently.

Options traders got in on the action as 12,000 call contracts had traded earlier on Friday vs. the less than 2,500 puts. The option of choice was the Jan 2013 5 call. It was the most actively traded strike with 2,025 contracts exchanged at one point.

But Bloomberg has a more interesting take on Friday. First, it posted a video headline that discussed Tiger Globe hedge fund taking a 9.9% stake in Groupon. This was old news from November.

Then it put out a story that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) could be a possible suitor for the company.