The S&P 500 stumbled on disappointing GDP numbers Friday morning, but held the 2,000 level and is bouncing higher with the help from the energy sector.

Crude oil staged a dramatic rally in afternoon trading and is up nearly $3 to $47.50. SPDR Energy Fund (XLE), which holds all of the energy names from the S&P 500, is up 1.4% to $75.94 and helping to offset losses in other sectors like financials (XLF), industrials (XLI), and utilities (XLU).

The S&P is down 2 points to 2018.25 and 18 points from session lows. With 90 minutes left to trade, the index is set to finish the month of January down 40 points or 1.9%.

Treasury bonds had a stellar start to 2015, however, and the yield on the benchmark ten-year dipped to 18-month lows of less than 1.7% in the wake of the GDP numbers. A boatload of data is due out next week, including jobs numbers Friday.

CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is up another point to 19.76 ahead of the event risk. VIX is now basically flat year-to-date. Since the index tracks the expected or implied volatility prices into S&P 500 Index (SPX) options, the relatively high readings in 2015 reflect the elevated premiums across the options market.

One theme that has emerged amid the higher ‘vols’ is big call writes on individual stocks. That is, as options are relatively rich and investors are probably seeing limited upside to shares, some big institutions are selling calls (against stock positions in most cases).

Examples of big call writes today include: 20,000 May 100 calls on CVS at $3.25, 10,000 Mar 5 calls on PVA, 13,145 Feb 56.5 calls at 24 cents, 10,000 Apr 115 calls on ASH, and 17,800 Mar 2.5 calls on GDP. To put these trades in perspective, recall that 1 call controls 100 shares. Therefore, 20,000 CVS calls represents control of 2 million shares. Selling 20,000 contracts at $32.5 generates $6.25 million in premium collected.

Since options are wasting assets and lose value over time, call writing makes sense as a way to generate income from stocks when rangebound trading is expected and implied volatility is high. The investor is also giving up potential gains if shares rally beyond the strike of the options through the expiration because the shares will be sold, or called away (100 share per call options), at the strike price if the calls are in-the-money.

In today’s market, the so-called “smart money” is selling calls because vols are elevated and upside might be limited.