Novatel, RIM offer divergent views on mobile phone demand
by Option Review - February 21st, 2008 3:09 pm
Today’s tickers: MRVL, MSFT, VNDA, NVTL, XLF, RIMM, GM, ZLC
MRVL – One day after ebullient share price action and call-buying activity sparked talk of an imminent takeover or a buoyant earnings surprise, chipmaker Marvell Technology tacked on another 3% gain to $11.33 as the buyout scuttle continues to stick. Once again it’s the call traders in the catbird seat, with calls outmoving puts by nearly 10 to 1 in afternoon trading. While the brunt of yesterday’s volume involved buying in March 10 calls, today we’re seeing heavy traffic one strike higher at the March 12.50 mark, where the 45-cent premium has attracted buyers as well as sellers looking to take a 12% profit from yesterday’s levels. While this second day of gains makes it tempting to give credence to the takeover talk, the level of fresh selling in April 12.50 calls combined with selling in May 15 calls and buying in 12.50 puts suggests that the party in its share price may not last much longer.
NVTL – Shares in Novatel Wireless, the maker of wireless PC cards and multimedia application products for cell phones for both Verizon and Sprint, plummeted more than 23% today to $10.63 – a fresh 52-week low. Following this week’s moves by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to offer fixed-rate monthly plans to consumers, Novatel issued Q1 guidance well below street expectations. Novatel executives said the initiatives by wireless service providers, believed by many to be the opening salvos in a cataclysmic price-war for the telecom industry, might carry “modest impact” as service providers seek to consolidate vendors. The guidance all but eclipsed higher Q4 earnings from the company. The news propelled option volume in Novatel to 8 times the daily average, as the value of the March 12.50 put ballooned some 200%. It’s here that the brunt of today’s volume is occurring, with the $2.00 premium attracting mostly sellers who may feel that the reaction to Novatel’s earnings was disproportionately bearish.
RIMM – Research in Motion was singing a different tune in the premarket, however. Shares in the Blackberry maker gained 9% to $107.04 after its Q4 new subscriber numbers bested the market’s consensus expectation by 20%. The news propelled options in RIMM to a volume of more than 83,000 lots in the first 90 minutes of the market, but the positioning here is surprisingly reticent- perhaps in light of the newly…
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DiggThrilling Thursday Morning
by Phil - February 21st, 2008 8:33 am
I’m calling this post "Thrilling Thursday Morning" but I make no promises about the afternoon.
We had a great move yesterday, the Fed made some noises one might even interpret as rational and we are getting some great news out of RIMM and AAPL as well as upgraded tech guidance, which can hopefully keep the SOX moving forward today but I’m concerned that OII’s bad report coupled with a slip in crude will drag down energy and other commodities and spook the markets again so let’s be cautious today.
We get the crude inventory report at 10:30 today along with natural gas inventories and I know I had my windows open this weekend it was so warm so I think they’ll be hard pressed for a big drawdown on either side of that market. I’m liking the EOG $95 puts, now $1.95 ahead of the inventories as well as selling the DIG $104 calls for $3.10, either naked or against the $108 calls at $1.10 as another $11 rise in oil by March expiration is hopefully unlikely and, even then, I’m happy to DD and roll to Apri as there are simply no fundamentals to support this run.
![[chart]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AK580_Distre_20080220205257.gif)
Even T Boone Pickins is shorting oil at this price (I’m not joking, he was on CNBC this morning saying $100 is too much, even though he predicted it)! We do still have some downside economic news with forecasts for corporate bond defaults jumping 500% over the past 2 years, from less than $10Bn to roughly $50Bn. This is still far below the $95Bn in defaults we hit in 2002 as the .com bubble burst and the combined terror of 9/11 and the Bush tax cuts hit the economy at the same time, robbing the middle class of their relative spending power and sending corporate profits (big corporations that is!) to record levels.
Stagflation made the front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning as if they just discovered it as they parsed through the Fed minutes. The Journal, unfortunately is getting to be a contrary indicator these days and, by the time a story hits their front page, it’s often over. We still have this major issue with issuers of auction-rate securities and we won’t be out of the woods until someone stabilizes this market as it’s scaring the rich folks, who have their money tied up…
Wild Wednesday Wrap-Up
by Phil - February 20th, 2008 11:46 pm
Wheee, that was fun!
The day went pretty much exactly as predicted in the morning and, other than CROX and NDAQ, both of which I still have faith in, pretty much everything we played on the day went up and that’s a very good thing! Still it’s all about the follow-through tomorrow but the one thing I took out of those Fed minutes was the statement that: "When prospects for growth had improved, a reversal of a portion of the recent easing actions, possibly even a rapid reversal, might be appropriate."
Wow, the Fed has heard of inflation, that’s amazing! They are still totally wrong in what they did but at least they get the concept, to further quote the minutes (which aren’t much more than a spun summary of the meeting): "Participants agreed that the inflation data that were received since the December meeting had been disappointing. But many believed that the slow growth in economic activity anticipated for the first half of this year and the associated slack in resource utilization would contribute to an easing of price pressures. Moreover, a leveling-off of energy and commodity prices such as that embedded in futures markets would also help moderate inflation pressures." So they were dead wrong about inflation and they have now driven it to the worst levels since Ford had to put on a "WIN" button to fight it but at least they are pretending they care.
Unfortunately, what they care about isn’t you at all, I often say the Fed is there to protect the bankers, not the consumers, so listen to this gem: "Some survey measures of inflation expectations had edged up in recent months, and longer-term financial market gauges of inflation compensation had climbed. The latter probably reflected at least in part increased uncertainty--inflation risk--rather than greater inflation expectations; increases in nominal wages did not appear to be incorporating higher inflation expectations. On balance, expectations seemed to remain fairly well anchored, but participants agreed that continued stability of inflation expectations was essential." So the banks are raising rates in anticipation of inflation but the workers are falling way behind as their wages remain the same (even as their interest paid on loans skyrockets) and the Fed can look down on this and smile and call it "fairly well balanced."
There are only two reasons the Fed will be spurred to action, either…
Which Way Wednesday? Fed Edition!
by Phil - February 20th, 2008 8:40 am
We have FOMC minutes at 2pm, that’s always fun.
The CPI and Housing Starts will give us topspin in the morning and I expect us to see some inflationary data in the CPI as both food and energy are out of control, probably breaking up to 0.3% even in "the core." Any positive movement in Building Permits will be seen as a good sign and we don’t get Oil Inventories until tomorrow along wiith Leading Economic Indicators (probably not pretty) and the Philly Fed, which was awful last month.
The markets will do what they want to do ahead of the minutes, which is probably continue to test a little lower but holding last week’s lows will be a good sign as they were higher than the lows of 1/22 and, as we keep saying, there is nothing going on that we didn’t already know about. If you’re going to have a proper rally you need to clear all the suckers out first and we’ve had some good capitulation but I think we will have a little more pain before we’re really ready to turn. Yesterday I said GOOG was on it’s way to retest $500, that more than any other stock will guide my daytrades on the Qs.
I’m hoping to buy QID $53 puts for $3 (now $3.70) as my bullish play of the day ahead of the Fed but, otherwise, we’ll just have to hope our covers hold (we are mainly 1/2 covered) through the morning shake out. Asia had a big shake this morning, giving up 532 points on the Hang Seng and 447 points on the Nikkei with financials leading the drop. Shanghai Pudong Development Bank’s planned share sale heightened concerns that China’s stock markets would be flooded with shares and the bank went "limit down" 10% in today’s trading. Also not helping is news that KFN has delayed Billions of dollars in payments to banks and is asking for the second restructuring in six months.
Of course industrials are also starting to take a hit as $100 oil is spooking inflation hawks with chemical and rubber manufacturers getting hit very hard in Asia and in Europe, where the markets are off about 1.5% in early trading. Heineken fell 5.9% on a 33% drop in net income caused by "steep price increases in raw material and packaging costs." VOD took a big hit as they…
Tuesday Wrap-Up
by Phil - February 19th, 2008 11:12 pm
Well that was just sad!
As we suspected in the morning, a rally that is based on nothing ends up having no support and we failed to retake Wednesday’s highs which led to a crumbling of the markets in the afternoon. Of course $100 oil was no help as the NYMEX jumped 5% for the day and the financials continued to dive, perhaps driven down by the poor news out of Europe this morning.
We got our Nasdaq leadership, only not the kind we wanted as the Composite fell 2% from the opening high of the day while the Dow fell 1% and the S&P droped 1.3% from the top. Google led the Nasdaq down with a 4% drop that didn’t look for a moment like they might change their minds on news that the company’s 10K indicated potential impact to revenues from Google’s efforts to cut down on "accidental clicks."
Telcoms got killed as well as T and VZ went to price war and the whole sector dropped 5% on the day. We were onto this rally just 10 minutes into it when I said: "I don’t like this rally so far guys, be careful! We need a firm break of 12,500 and not getting past it will affirm a top" and we did brush briefly right up against 12,500 and lost it quickly. As I said at 9:47: "The most dangerous thing to do this week is to fool yourself into thinking it’s OK to have $100 oil, it simply is not."
By 10:15 we started covering and thank goodness for that or we would have had a pretty miserable day as all our gains just faded away from that point on. I noted an hour later that it was "nothing more than a huge energy and commodity rally, really nothing to celebrate today."
We took our first new $25KP play today and it’s not looking good as we spread 5 CROX Jun $28s against 4 March $34s and CROX got KILLED after hours on in-line earnings and very slightly lower guidance. HPQ got a boost from a nickel beat along with upside guidance but NTRI and WFMI were also punished for failing to live up to expectations.
On the whole, nothing much happened all day so we continue to wait for clarity as this short week rolls on.
Tuesday Already?
by Phil - February 19th, 2008 9:04 am
Wow, this week is flying!
I LOOKS, from the futures, like we are heading into a very strong open for no particular reason other than nothing really bad happened over the weekend, which is a huge relief compared to what happened over the MLK weekend so our premise that people were simply unwilling to take a chance over the three-day weekend is holding up nicely.
We had a rough weekend trying (and failing) to get the new site engine up and running so we rolled back to the same situation we’ve had all month, with the Basic Subscription Site up in the air for another week until they can work the bugs out so it will be business as usual (or unusual, as the case may be) for the rest of this week at PSW.
It is anything but business as usual in Cuba as Castro steps down after 50 years in power. "What does this mean for the people in Cuba?" Bush said at a news conference during his trip to Africa, which is surprising only as far as that the President knew which country Castro was from… There will, in fact, be little immediate impact as Fidel’s brother Raul has been running the country since last year and will continue to do so. Cuba is where, of course, we have Guantanamo Bay and the President also said: "They’re the ones who were put in prison because of their beliefs. They’re the ones who have been denied their right to live in a free society…. In the meantime, political prisoners will rot in prison and the human condition will remain pathetic in many cases." Don’t blame me, he really says these things, I just changed the context of the hypocrisy! 
So that and WMT’s in-line report are the only major news items of the day which indicates this is more a relief rally than anything sustainable if we don’t break the technical levels we failed last week. Keep an eye on last Wednesday’s highs to see if we are making any real progress. MBI is bringing back Joe Brown to run the company and he had just this to say: "My objectives in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead are very simple," Brown wrote in a shareholder letter released Tuesday. "Deal with the current turmoil and position MBIA to sell Triple-A financial guarantee…
Finding Value
by OptionSage - February 19th, 2008 4:14 am
Recently, the Harvard Business Review reported a study from 1992-2006 on differences in industry profitability. The average return on invested capital varied markedly from industry to industry. At the high end are industries like soft drinks and prepackaged software which have been almost six times more profitable than the airline industry over the period.
Security Brokers and Dealers: 40.9%
Soft Drinks: 37.6%
Prepackaged Software: 37.6%
Pharmaceuticals: 31.7%
Perfume, Cosmetics, Toiletries: 28.6%
Advertising Agencies: 27.3%
Distilled Spirits: 26.4%
Semiconductors: 21.3%
Medical Instruments: 21.0%
Men’s and Boy’s Clothing: 19.5%
Tires: 19.5%
Household Applicances: 19.2%
Malt Beverages: 19.0%
Child Day Care Services: 17.6%
Houshold Furniture: 17.0%
Drug Stores: 16.5%
Grocery Stores: 16.0%
Iron and Steel Foundries: 15.6%
Cookies & Crackers: 15.4%
Mobile Homes: 15.0%
Wine and Brandy: 13.9%
Bakery Products: 13.8%
Engines and Turbines: 13.7%
Book Publishing: 13.4%
Laboratory Equipment: 13.4%
Oil & Gas Machinery: 12.6%
Soft Drink Bottling: 11.7%
Knitting Mills: 10.5%
Hotels: 10.4%
Catalog, Mail-Order Houses: 5.9%
Airlines: 5.9%
The average industry Return on Invested Capital in the U.S. was calculated to be 14.9%.
The industry topping the list, Security Brokers and Dealers, prompted me to investigate the fundamentals of some online brokers. Among them, OptionsXpress popped out as a compelling value proposition.
Scanning valuation metrics, I noted that OptionsXpress had a Market Capitalization of 1.59Bn but an Enterprise Value of just $918M. Relatively, that is a huge difference; so huge in fact that it caused me to look immediately to the Balance Sheet to confirm the cause of the disparity. On the Balance Sheet was listed a whopping $669M in cash and zero debt. (Cash, Debt and Market Capitalization are all factored into Enterprise Value).
The Income Statement was the next area of interest. Revenues reported were $247M while Gross Profit was $166M according to Yahoo! Finance. The fact that so much of the top line figure drops lower on the Statement indicates high margins and this is precisely the case. Indeed, the Profit Margin is 39.56% and the Operating Margin is 64.59%. These margins are not especially surprising given the margins reported in the study are so high.
One of the most important areas to focus on when evaluating financial statements is the Cash Flow statement. According to Google Finance, the all-important Net Change in Cash is $66M which is very attractive given that the revenue figures are only about four times that number. Digging deeper into the Cash figures,…
Weekly Wrap-Up
by Phil - February 18th, 2008 11:38 pm
Hey we gained 200 points for the week!
While it didn’t end particularly well, the week did exactly what we thought it would, including making a chart that shows you why they call Wednesday "Hump Day" and we had our expected St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on Capitol Hill which I still think was cathartic and, overall, a good thing as we finally got all those nagging fears off our collective chest and put them out on the table for all to see.
We played the week pretty well, going "pretty bullish" in last week’s wrap-up and we got all the key elements we were looking for in a rally other than oil behaving itself as it is doing pretty much the opposite of that for the past 3 days. On Monday Morning I pointed out that the level of panic being generated by the media was officially out of control and buying into the morning dip on Monday gave us a lot of nice winners. The big news on Monday was BAC and CVX replacing MO and HON on the Dow as well as our man Chavez cutting off oil to America (note to readers – we survived!). As I said in Monday’s Wrap-Up: "The sell-off was overdone, the problems we face are fixable, the World isn’t coming to an end just because America catches an economic cold!"
I warned in Monday’s post that Thursday’s Senate Banking Committee meeting could get ugly so we were well prepared for that and the market kept going up despite the report that the Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index had its worst month since 2002. Tuesday gave us the expected bad news from GM’s earnings but they were Trumped by Buffett’s offer to bail out the bond insurers. I said our Big Chart levels should hold and we pretty much finished the week right at Tuesday’s open. Since Monday was a pretty good day, we really can’t complain.
On Tuesday Paulson "unveiled" Project Lifeline, which gave borrowers a 30-day extension before being kicked out of thier homes to "work something out" with the lenders. You see, the government isn’t doing NOTHING, they have a plan for YOU to "work SOMETHING out" and fix this crisis for them….
In Tuesday’s wrap-up I noted about the failure to properly address the forclosure issue: "The government’s failure to address this issue is still the…
Carbonated contrarians put the juice in puts at Hansen Natural Beverages
by Option Review - February 18th, 2008 3:01 pm
Today’s tickers: SKS, HANS, HNT, XLF, C, GS, BSC, PDLI, MOT, AW, KFT
SKS – Another day and no news of a deal for department store Saks by Iceland’s enterprising Baugur Group. The Wall Street Journal today reported that Saks is one of three potential takeover targets being mulled by Baugur at present – the other two being U.K.-based Moss Bros. and Debenham’s. Saks shares closed .17% lower at $17.17 on Friday, and the surge in late-day option trading shows option traders digging in for the long haul by trading March puts at 17.50 and 20 – possibly a bear put spread strategy that would limit potential profits but help to defray the $3.60 premium on the $20 put that comes as a result of Saks’ extremely elevated 77% implied volatility reading. For a second consecutive session we observed volume at the May 22.50 straddle, which at $6.73 is roughly unchanged in price from yesterday.
HANS – Hansen Natural Beverages, the maker of Rumba energy drinks, and a line of eponymous fruit juices, drew a Goldman Sachs analyst upgrade earlier today, on expectation that sales at its Monster drink unit could surge as much as 54%. Earlier this month its shares rallied on resurgent analyst talk, this time out of UBS, that Coca-Cola might take advantage of its 10% year-to-date share price decline to stage a takeover and leverage immediate manufacturing synergies. So there’s a fairly broad palette of expectations heading into Hansen Natural’s earnings report on February 25, all of which has contributed to a surge in option volume equivalent to 25% of its total open interest, and almost all of it – quizzically – in puts. The put-buying we observed this afternoon – this as shares traded 6.7 % higher at $40.48 no less – occurred at the March 40 strike, at premiums of $3.80. This position implies a 9% pull back from current share price levels that would all but dispel an earnings surprise or any bold move on the part of Coke. Implied volatility has remained at an elevated 74% reading for much of the past month, ever since the Coke-for-Hansen reports resurfaced, as traders look for shares in Hansen to show a third more volatility over the next month than they have shown historically.
HNT – Capping off a week that has seen an inordinate amount of volatility in health care insurers, shares…
Weekend Reading – Always in Progress!
by Phil - February 16th, 2008 4:31 pm
Well that was a fun week and I’m off today, but as things catch my eye I’ll throw them up and it’s nice to have a fresh place for discussions anyway.
I’m trying to get a handle on the overall market conditions as I’m trying to figure out how to get our two new virtual portfolios off on the right foot. So far, it seems like no one has any idea what to think and there are very compelling bull and bear arguements. None of this changes my overall thoughts that we would bottom out in Q1 and make new highs in Q3, except that I originally thought we would consolidate between 13,000 and 13,000 with perhaps a spike as low as 11,500 but 12,500 forming a very solid floor. You may think I’m not far off but I’m off on the very dangerous side and what I thought would be a floor is acting like a ceiling so my confidence is getting shaken as well.
If we can’t get over 12,700 and restablish 12,500 as a firm floor (preferably 12,700 though), then we are going to have a really rough spring and we’ll have to be thrilled to get to 13,500 in the summer. It all comes down to oil, do we spend, globally $30 x 100M gallons a day on something we burn or do we spend it on consumer goods? That’s the Trillion dollar question on the difference between $60 a gallon and $90 a gallon, which brings me to my first weekend article.
Floyd Norris, in the Times, follows up on what Barry and I have been saying this week about retail sales and has this neat, but scary chart that clearly shows how food and energy are sucking the life out of the economy:
The worst thing about this chart is that the last time Bush gave money away (his election rebates) was followed THE WORST dip in retail spending, and food and energy were considerably cheaper then! Remember these are year/year changes, not just the fixed price, so when energy starts at 100 in 1997 and stays flat through ’99 that’s still $100, but then it’s $108 in 2000 after an 8% change and $112 in 2001 after a 4% gain and then $108 again after a 4% drop in 2002 after which it’s all uphill as the Fed pumped money right out of our…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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