Arena Pharmaceuticals Options in High Demand as Shares Rally to New 52-Week High
by Option Review - July 30th, 2010 4:19 pm
Today’s tickers: ARNA, EXPE, LPX & NLY
ARNA – Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. – Shares of the biotechnology firm surged 14.6% this morning to a new 52-week high of $8.00 inspiring options investors to establish near-term bullish stances on the stock as the battle royal between the firm and its competitors to get an obesity drug on the market continues to rage. Arena’s shares are currently up 7.90% to stand at $7.53 as of 12:35 pm ET. Investors positioning for continued upward movement in the price of the underlying shares picked up 1,900 now in-the-money calls at the August $7.0 strike for an average premium of $0.93 apiece. In-the-money call coveters make money if Arena’s shares are trading above the average breakeven price of $7.93 at expiration. Buying interest spread to the higher August $8.0 strike where bulls purchased approximately 2,600 calls for an average premium of $0.58 each. Arena’s shares must rally 13.95% over the current price of $7.53 in order for August $9.0 strike call buyers to start to accumulate profits above the breakeven point to the upside at $9.58 by expiration day in August. Other optimists paid an average premium of $0.27 per contract to take ownership of 1,000 calls at the August $9.0 strike. Traders long the higher-strike calls profit as long as ARNA’s shares jump 23.1% to surpass the breakeven price of $9.27 by August expiration. Options traders exchanged more than 46,900 calls on the stock by 12:42 pm ET. Approximately 2.35 calls changed hands on Arena for each single put option in action thus far in the trading session.
EXPE – Expedia, Inc. – Online travel company, Expedia, popped up on our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner in the first half of the trading day due to near-term activity in both calls and puts. Expedia’s shares surged 9.5% to touch an intraday high of $23.08 on news the firm reported earning second-quarter net income of $0.44 a share, which exceeded the average analyst forecast of $0.42 a share, after the closing bell on Thursday evening. EXPE’s shares are currently up 7.40% on the day at $22.63 as of 12:50 pm ET. Bullish players hoping to see Expedia’s shares extend gains scooped up approximately 1,100 now in-the-money calls at the August $22.5 strike for an average premium of $0.95 each. Call buyers stand ready to profit should the largest online travel company’s shares rally another…
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn 
del.icio.us
DiggRANsquawk Market Wrap Up – Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 30/07/10
by Zero Hedge - July 30th, 2010 4:06 pm
Courtesy of RANSquawk Video
Market Breaks As Stocks Explode To Celebrate Sub 2.9% 10 Year
by Zero Hedge - July 30th, 2010 3:52 pm
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
The capital markets, which are celebrating accelerating deflation and inflation at the same time, are now officially insane, as the Dow has diverged from its credit implied fair value by about 170 points! This will all end in lots and lots of tears. We hope the computers enjoy trading with each other as much as all carbon based lifeforms relinquish the en masse abandonment of the stock market.
DARK HORSE HEDGE – After the BOOM!
by Sabrient - July 30th, 2010 3:19 pm
DARK HORSE HEDGE – After the BOOM!
Add Clinical Data, Inc. (CLDA) SHORT at the market, 7/30/10
Clinical Data, Inc. operates as a global biotechnology company developing early and late stage targeted therapeutics, as well as genetic and pharmacogenomic tests that detect serious diseases and help predict drug safety, tolerability, and efficacy.
After taking profits on earnings sell-offs from AMAG and BOOM, we are adding Clinical Data, Inc. (CLDA) as the 8th SHORT in our currently BALANCED tilt. CLDA is rated a STRONGSELL by Sabrient with a BALANCE SHEET score barely registering at 1.1 (out of 100) and almost non-existent FUNDAMENTALS score of 0.3 (out of 100). These rosy figures combine with five analysts forecasting a second quarter loss of -$.63. That is coming off a mind-numbing first quarter loss of -$1.44 per share, compared with expectations for only losing -$.63. These negatives provide us with a heavy dose of “preponderance of evidence” to believe CLDA is a reasonable SHORT at the market, Friday July 30, 2010.
*****
EARNINGS UPDATE: Ingram Micro (IM)
Ingram Micro (IM): LONG with Phil’s Buy/Write strategy in DHH virtual portfolio
As expected in our July 26, 2010 post, IM posted better than expected results and higher revenues after the market closed on Thursday. Analysts had been forecasting a profit of +$.37 per share and revenue of $7.9B, but IM delivered a healthy +$.44 per share and revenue of $8.2B. "Every region performed well, with our two largest regions doubling and tripling operating profits on double-digit sales growth," Ingram Micro Chief Executive Gregory Spierkel said in a statement. That is the type of BOOM! (see BOOM! article this morning) statement we like to hear from our long stocks.
We feel very comfortable with the position we put on using Phil’s Buy/Write Strategy. IM is trading +1.67% today at $16.44. Recall that we took in $2.50 in option premium on Monday by selling the December 2010 $17.50 calls and puts. On Monday, we wrote:
Add LONG Ingram Micro (IM) at the market Monday July 26.
We like IM leading into its earnings announcement on July 29, 2010. The 10 analysts covering
…
Naked Cramer – Annotation Day Four
by Zero Hedge - July 30th, 2010 3:18 pm
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Geoffrey Raymond’s art, just like fine wine, only gets better with time. This is particularly true if the art is subjected to accelerated aging via repeated days of annotations. Raymond’s latest piece: the Naked Cramer, is now on its day four of soliciting random and assorted commentary, and the prevailing sentiment on CNBC’s permabullish stockpicker is certainly starting to shine through. The results are below.
Japan: Land of the Rising Debt
by Zero Hedge - July 30th, 2010 2:51 pm
Courtesy of Vitaliy Katsenelson
Investors are understandably scared of the sovereign debt crisis unfolding in Europe. Amid their angst, however, they are ignoring a more likely, and significantly larger, debt catastrophe that is about to hit the nation with the second-largest economy in the world — Japan. Two decades of stimulative, low-interest-rate fiscal policy have made Japan the most indebted nation in the developed world, and as new Prime Minister Naoto Kan recently said, in his first address to Parliament, that situation is not sustainable. Japan has little choice but to raise interest rates substantially, with dire consequences far beyond its shores.
The prelude to the current crisis began in the early 1990s, after Japan’s housing and stock market bubbles burst and its economy slipped into recession. For the next 20 years, using flashy names like Fiscal Structural Reform Act, Emergency Employment Measures and Policy Measures of Economic Rebirth, the government cut taxes, increased spending and borrowed money to finance itself. Today, Japan’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product stands at almost 200 percent, more than twice that of the U.S. and Germany and second only to Zimbabwe.
A country with ballooning debt needs to have an expanding economy to outgrow the burden. Economic growth is driven by two factors: productivity and population growth. Although the Japanese economy may continue to reap the benefits of productivity gains, population growth is not in the cards.
Japan has one of the oldest populations in the developed world — every fourth person is 65 or older — and its number is on the decline. The Japanese birth rate is one of the lowest in the world, a meager 1.2 children per woman. To maintain its current population level, the average woman in Japan would need to give birth to 2.1 children. (Of course, only economists know how a woman can give birth to a fractional child.)
The severity of the debt problem in Japan has been masked by the fact that government spending on interest payments has not changed over the past two decades, as the average interest rate paid on the country’s debt declined to 1.4 percent in 2009 from more than 6 percent in the 1990s. This is about to change. Historically, more than 90 percent of Japan’s government-issued debt has been consumed internally by its citizens, directly or through its pension system. But the…
Banks In Ninth District Blame Unwillingness To Lend On Obama Policies
by Zero Hedge - July 30th, 2010 2:47 pm
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
The latest and most damning confirmation that it is none other than the president and his errant policies that are the primary cause for the credit crunch spreading among individuals and small and medium businesses like a paperborne version of the plague, comes direct from the Minneapolis Fed, where in a paper titled “Come and get it--please: Banks and credit unions say they have money to lend, but credit markets are still struggling for a variety of reasons” the Ninth Fed district puts the blame for the credit freeze flatly where it belongs: the president himself, and more specifically his destructive economic advisors. “The most-cited reasons—though only by a small margin—were organizational uncertainty about future financial system reforms and regulatory restrictions on bank lending. A Minnesota institution stated flatly, “The regulatory environment has impacted our willingness to make loans.” And stunningly enough, the desire by an ever-greater portion of Americans to forgo future credit and to splurge on idiotic purchases like iPods even as they no longer pay their mortgage and destroy their credit rating is having repercussions. “Said a South Dakota institution, ‘We have money to lend, but cannot always fund applicants due to inability to borrow. Their poor credit histories keep them from obtaining credit.’” Who would have thunk that while Wall Street is immune from the causal relationship between action and reaction, and in fact blowing itself (and being rescued by taxpayers) up leads to infinite creditability by the US government, the opposite is absolutely not true, as Americans are now less able than ever to procure loans from these very same bailed out banks
Full Minneapolis Fed paper:
Come and get it--please
Banks and credit unions say they have money to lend, but credit markets are still struggling for a variety of reasons.
Ronald A. Wirtz – Editor, fedgazette
July 2010
As the weather has warmed in the Ninth District, credit conditions have barely thawed, according to a recent poll of bank and credit union executives in district states by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Financial institutions report that they have money to lend, thanks to growing deposits. However, there’s not a lot of demand for loans and other credit—a situation exacerbated by the fact that creditworthiness continues to sag among businesses and consumers. Financial institutions also continue to…
On BNN: Range-Bound Markets, eBay, Pfizer, Vodafone
by Zero Hedge - July 30th, 2010 2:29 pm
Courtesy of Vitaliy Katsenelson
http://watch.bnn.ca/featured/#clip327942
Vitaliy N. Katsenelson, CFA, is a portfolio manager/director of research at Investment Management Associates in Denver, Colo. He is the author of “Active Value Investing: Making Money in Range-Bound Markets” (Wiley 2007). To receive Vitaliy’s future articles my email, click here.
Sprott’s John Embry “Gold Is On The Cusp Of A Parabolic Move Up”
by Zero Hedge - July 30th, 2010 2:19 pm
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Today, the FT provided some additional information on the BIS’ “goldgate” as relates to its 346 tonnes of gold disclosed as swapped recently by the ubercentral bank. As the FT says, “Investors have bought physical gold in record amounts during the past two years and deposited it in commercial banks. European financial institutions are awash with bullion and some are trying to pledge gold as a guarantee.” There was nothing necessarily new in the article, and as expected the swap was merely put in place to collateralize a dollar funding crunch ahead of the European insolvency, allegedly resolved by the guaranteeing of $1 trillion in the world biggest bail out fund by the IMF and the ECB. Nonetheless, at least now we can end speculating as to who benefited: it was not entire countries that had pledged their gold reserves to the ECB (contrary to the rumor that Portugal had given Bernanke a lien on its gold), but merely ten banks, of which HSBC, Société Générale and BNP Paribas were the biggest. While HSBC’s presence is somewhat surprising, the latter two banks having found themselves in a massive currency crunch makes sense: as Zero Hedge had previously noted, this is confirmation that it was precisely the French banks that had found themselves on the wrong side of some major euro trades (one need only to recall BNP’s call for subparity in the EURUSD from a month ago). Yet what is without doubt is that physical gold will play an increasingly prominent role as a hard collateral asset. In light of this, we present to you the thoughts of Sprott’s John Embry on the precious metal, titled “Gold’s on the cusp of parabolic move up” whose conclusion fits with the implications of the BIS action: “Central banks can no longer supply the amount needed to balance supply and demand while mine production continues to stagnate at best. It is imperative that investors ignore the volatility created by the anti-gold cartel and use every opportunity that is created by them to purchase more physical gold.” Yes John is conflicted, and yes, he has said comparable things in the past… maybe, as more and more piece of the puzzle come into place, this time he will finally be right?
Full Embry essay
06_23_2010 Gold’s on the cusp of a parabolic move up
h/t Kyle
DARK HORSE HEDGE – After the BOOM!
by ilene - July 30th, 2010 2:10 pm
DARK HORSE HEDGE – After the BOOM!
Add Clinical Data, Inc. (CLDA) SHORT at the market, 7/30/10
Clinical Data, Inc. operates as a global biotechnology company developing early and late stage targeted therapeutics, as well as genetic and pharmacogenomic tests that detect serious diseases and help predict drug safety, tolerability, and efficacy.
After taking profits on earnings sell-offs from AMAG and BOOM, we are adding Clinical Data, Inc. (CLDA) as the 8th SHORT in our currently BALANCED tilt. CLDA is rated a STRONGSELL by Sabrient with a BALANCE SHEET score barely registering at 1.1 (out of 100) and almost non-existent FUNDAMENTALS score of 0.3 (out of 100). These rosy figures combine with five analysts forecasting a second quarter loss of -$.63. That is coming off a mind-numbing first quarter loss of -$1.44 per share, compared with expectations for only losing -$.63. These negatives provide us with a heavy dose of “preponderance of evidence” to believe CLDA is a reasonable SHORT at the market, Friday July 30, 2010.
*****
EARNINGS UPDATE: Ingram Micro (IM)
Ingram Micro (IM): LONG with Phil’s Buy/Write strategy in DHH virtual portfolio
As expected in our July 26, 2010 post, IM posted better than expected results and higher revenues after the market closed on Thursday. Analysts had been forecasting a profit of +$.37 per share and revenue of $7.9B, but IM delivered a healthy +$.44 per share and revenue of $8.2B. "Every region performed well, with our two largest regions doubling and tripling operating profits on double-digit sales growth," Ingram Micro Chief Executive Gregory Spierkel said in a statement. That is the type of BOOM! (see BOOM! article this morning) statement we like to hear from our long stocks.
We feel very comfortable with the position we put on using Phil’s Buy/Write Strategy. IM is trading +1.67% today at $16.44. Recall that we took in $2.50 in option premium on Monday by selling the December 2010 $17.50 calls and puts. On Monday, we wrote:
Add LONG Ingram Micro (IM) at the market Monday July 26.
We like IM leading into its earnings announcement on July 29, 2010. The 10 analysts covering
…
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Chinese
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...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(