Phil's Stock World, Stock Options Trading & Information

Thanks Phil another great week of guiding us!

- Steven Parker, Dec 18, 2009

Don’t expect to get rich quick here, but you can get easy 30 - 50 % per year, just by buying good stocks at discount (as we often discuss), selling monthly premiums of calls and puts.

- Tchayipov, Nov 25, 2009

Hi Mr. Phill, I am a Venezuelan lady tormented by our politicall situation, who use to be an emerging market trader, and many other executive positins in the finance \"arena\" and now is trying to built a new concept and service for asset management for clients on my own, I am in the trial and learning process at the moment, I also invest for some friends and myself. I want to congratulate you , because reading you fill my days with a touch of irony (besides ,of course the spectacular market insight) that happens to give me energy, its a joy the remarks and comments even the pictures used, sometimes I just read it for the fun, I completily agree with your thouhts, though we belong to totally different cultures and enviorements and certanly realities Your readings is like a little hand helping me out to be in the market and fight for my devastated country where every single day we looe inches and yards of liberty. You shoul try to writte a book!

- Mindeyes, Aug 5, 2009

Phil: I loaded up big time yesterday on your suggestion of the AMZN September 75 naked puts. They are up 43%!

- Gel1, Jul 24, 2009

Phil: Once again thanks for those inciteful comments, and the old links to Sage’s portfolio management (I hadn’t read before). I’m an experienced stock trader, but over the last 3 or 4 months have come to appreciate options trading here at PSW, and the consistency of your many premium-selling strategies. It is liberating to have to worry less about getting direction right and being able to generate 5% MONTHLY returns with close to delta-neutral positioning. Much appreciated!

- Neverworkagain , Jul 16, 2009

Phil: I am always able to figure out your trades, including the rational when put in the right context of previous comments, etc. Keep doing what you’re doing. It is much appreciated, and invaluable. Your hit rate of successful trades has been very high in my 1.5 months as a member, but even more importantly is your teaching of how to repair and DD positions that haven’t gone your way yet. As with most members, we all have our ‘pet’ trading interests, and learning how to think about trading is much more important than a specific trade, which could see the conditions behind it change an hour later. This is the classic case, of ‘Teach us to Fish’, rather than just giving us a fish once in a while. Thank you!

- Neverworkagain , Jun 7, 2009

Phil - Thanks for the welcoming gift of the POT at a buck Just paid for this month and my membership is not even 24 hours old! looking forward to many more - bk

- Bjkeck, May 13, 2009

A truly great website with a lot of information for investors. Whether you are a novice, seasoned, or a professional there is a lot to be gained about stock options and options trading from this very informative website.

- ZKatkin, Mar 21, 2009

Opt, I think the hardest thing is being disciplined enough to trade with you. Atleast now when I see something go in the red I know how much I’m going to loose and that I will profit somewhere else and have enough money left at the end of the day to trade again. Thanks for all your hard work! My stress levels are down 75% and I have even made a small profit in the short time I’ve been here

- Mopar, Feb 9, 2009

Phil: UNH, hedged stock position, doing great, up over 50 %,

- RMM, Jan 23, 2009

Beginner's Guide to Options Trading. Free PDF Guide. Where & when to trade, how to prevent stock or option loss and how to make money!

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Posts Tagged ‘3COM’

$1.3 million lost in blatant but failed attempt at insider trading?

by ilene - November 17th, 2009 1:41 am

Welcome to Baruch at Ultimi Barbarorum.* In this post, Baruch revisits the alleged, insider trading of 3Com options, casting doubt as to whether the calls were bought by persons with inside information prior to the takeover. More likely, scared shorts were trying to hedge their positions. - Ilene

$1.3 million lost in blatant but failed attempt at insider trading?

Courtesy of Ultimi Barbarorum

The blogosphere made the catch! The Interweb protects the rest of us from evil doers! The world is ablaze with the news that prior to the 3Com buyout announced by HP last week, there was an unusual amount of volume in the $5 november call in 3Com. We’re all pretty sensitised to insider trading at the moment, and so this looks as clear cut and beautiful a case of evil-doers caught with their hands in the till as we are likely to see in our time on earth. As Tyler Durden puts it:

This is so blatant it is sufficiently stupid that even the SEC will presumably catch the perpetrator. Here’s to hoping the trader ends up being Galleon’s Raj Raj buying options from his E-Trade account while on bail. Of course, we fully expect any prosecution case against the perpetrator to fall apart at the seams courtesy of a completely inept legal team at the SEC and the Justice Department.

Oh really? Before the Zero Hedge folks get the pitchforks out, let’s stop and think a bit. Let us be splitters, and not lumpers, and we might see that would be quite reasonable for the SEC and DoJ not to prosecute anyone at all. Using the principle of Occam’s Razor, they may well tend to conclude that no insider trading took place.

Let’s get technical here. Do forgive Baruch if you get lost (because it may be that you’re not actually all that bright and that’s not his fault). In the case of the unusual volume in the 3Com options, you should know that incredibly unusual volumes in options is not terribly unusual, if you follow me. It is in fact the case that the volume of a particular option resides, as Taleb would have it, in Extremistan. It is subject to many many days of low and limited trading, and very few days of extremely high volume, orders of magnitude above the norm, where most of the total volume traded in the life of the option takes place. This occurs most notably in the…

Citizens On Patrol: The Blogosphere As Regulator

by ilene - November 11th, 2009 11:07 pm

Bloggers also coin new words, for example, "embiggen." - Ilene

Citizens On Patrol: The Blogosphere As Regulator

Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker

Tonight we witnessed a watershed event in financial blogging, and it concerns The Case of Who Front-Ran the 3Com Takeover.

By now, the only people out there still trying to use options contracts to profit from inside information are the brain-dead and the citizens of non-extradition countries. As is well known, I am a huge proponent of the financial blogosphere and this evening’s 3Com options bust just gave me goosebumps.

The story is this:

At 4pm, shares of telco equipment company 3Com (COMS) were halted followed by the announcement of an acquisition by Hewlett-Packard at a 40% premium. The financial blogosphere sprang into action, immediately pointing out that today’s trading volume in 3Com’s options was triple its 4-week daily average. Options are the weapon of choice for the inside information crook as they give you the most bang for your buck on a near-term jump in a stock.

OptionMonster.com’s Jon Najarian picked this 3Com options activity up, probably first, and posted the below via Twitter:

(click image to embiggen)

From OptionMonster.com

Najarian’s revelation was immediately followed by separate but equally incisive comments from some of the biggest and most influential market commentators out there. None of this was coordinated by a producer at CNBC nor was it orchestrated by the editorial staff at the Wall Street Journal.

Rather, it was an organic meme that spread around the financial web by means of Twitter, WordPress, Blogspot and Typepad.

The mainstream media picked up on this insider trading angle only AFTER the bloggers nailed it, at least from what I’ve seen based on the times of the articles and posts.

Now we don’t know for sure whether or not illegal activity took place, but if it quacks like a duck…

Congratulations to Jon Najarian of OptionMonster.com, Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge, Andrew Ross Sorkin of DealBook and Karl Denninger of Market-Ticker.

UPDATE: Reader MarketAddict informs me that:

OptionRadar on StockTwits tweeted the unusual call volume during the day today:

http://twitter.com/OptionRadar/status/5623636484

Ladies and Gentlemen of the stock market, I give you your new citizen-regulators.

Here are the referenced links:

Najarian’s TwitPic (TwitPic)

1.5 Million in Blatant Insider Trading Activity (Zero Hedge)

Whispers About 3Com (DealBook)

Blatant Insider Call Buying (Market-Ticker)

Tags: 3COM, bloggers, call buying, insider trading

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

$1.5 Million In Blatant Insider Trading Profit Following 3Com Acquisition (Or An Innocent Calendar Spread)

by Insider Zone - November 11th, 2009 7:55 pm

Maybe we should rename this section the "Insider Trading Zone" and get a little more action. - Ilene

$1.5 Million In Blatant Insider Trading Profit Following 3Com Acquisition (Or An Innocent Calendar Spread)

Courtesy of Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

3Com’s acquisition by Hewlett Packard for $7.90/share after the close today came as a surprise to many, but not all. Because someone bought 3 times the open interest in November $5 calls and 15 times the open interest of the December calls. In summary: 3,961 Nov $5 calls were purchased today (964 open interest) for $0.65, as were 3,269 December $5 Calls (210 open interest) for $0.85. The profit, assuming the insider action was by one entity, is about $870,000 on the Novembers and $650,000 on the December strikes, for a not too shabby illegal daily P&L of $1.5 million. This is so blatant it is sufficiently stupid that even the SEC will presumably catch the perpetrator. Here’s to hoping the trader ends up being Galleon’s Raj Raj buying options from his E-Trade account while on bail. Of course, we fully expect any prosecution case against the perpetrator to fall apart at the seams courtesy of a completely inept legal team at the SEC and the Justice Department.

The chart below summarizes the trading action in COMS $5 near term calls.

And here one can see what a blazing outlier today’s volume action was in December $5 calls.

3com

h/t ever vigilant momo chaser C-Mac

*****

Zero Hedge later issued the following report on the squidy tentacled Goldman Sachs’ possible involvement.

Goldman And The 3Com "Insider Trading" Connection

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

Following up on our earlier disclosure about potential insider trading in 3Com stock, we have uncovered something interesting. Did Goldman (in)advertently tip off clients that 3Com was potentially in strategic negotiations? 3Com was previously supposed to present at Goldman’s Data Center Techtonics Conference today at the Sheraton Hotel in New York (Agenda below). In a limited distribution note, Goldman yesterday advised selected clients that 3Com had withdrawn at the last minute from the Conference. As those in the industry are well aware, any last minute switches of this kind are indicative of imminent good or bad news dissemination, and more often than not are associated with some strategic announcement.

While the person buying the calls (if indeed this was not a calendar spread) may have been provoked to do so as a hedge against anything crazy out of the firm, it…

Tags: 3COM, Goldman Sachs, HP, insider trading

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Phil's Favorites

Bears Emboldened By Low CBOE Equity Put to Call Ratio

March 20th, 2010 1:50 pm

Bears Emboldened By Low CBOE Equity Put to Call Ratio

Courtesy of Bill Luby at Vix and More

Truthfully, I have not surveyed our ursine friends this morning, so I really have no idea if they are emboldened by the low CBOE equity put to call ratio (CPCE), but they should be.

My preferred way of looking at the equity put to call ratio involves using an exponential 10 day moving average (EMA) as a smoothing factor. The 10 day EMA generates the dotted blue line ...

Zero Hedge

How To Capitalize On The Upcoming Irrationally Exuberant LBO Bubble

March 20th, 2010 12:53 pm

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

Bernanke's ludicrous monetary policy has forced financial companies to relever to mid-2000 levels. A recent CLO has broken the 12 month quiet period in the structured finance universe, and finally made it all too clear that bankers and asset managers have no idea what to do with all the free extra money lying around, earning nothing on the short end of the curve. Furthermore, with rampant M&A rumors every day (of which 90% are patently false) private equity must be getting nervous. As we all know, with great free money comes great irresponsibility to do really dumb things, better known as LBOs. We analyze the imminent tidal wave of going private deals, which, if Bernanke keeps ZIRP for another year as is widely expected, is just around the corner, and that the record TXU LBO of 2007 will be promptly surpassed, in both size and idiocy. Oh well, if you can't beat them, join them...

Chart School

Bears Emboldened By Low CBOE Equity Put to Call Ratio

March 20th, 2010 1:56 pm

Bears Emboldened By Low CBOE Equity Put to Call Ratio

Courtesy of Bill Luby at Vix and More

Truthfully, I have not surveyed our ursine friends this morning, so I really have no idea if they are emboldened by the low CBOE equity put to call ratio (CPCE), but they should be.

My preferred way of looking at the equity put to call ratio involves using an exponential 10 day moving average (EMA) as a smoothing factor. The 10 day EMA generates the dotted blue li...

Trading Goddess

Options and My Patience Expire Today

March 19th, 2010 9:29am

Well now we're officially cashed out!

As I always do before options expiration I reviewed our Buy List, which, this quarter, is a list of 37 stocks we've been playing since late December and, sadly, after reviewing 37 of our favorite investments very carefully this week - I could only conclude that cashing them out was the only decision I could be comfortable with this week. Of 66 trades we had on our 37 stocks, 64 are winners with an average return since 2/8 of 28% - since most of the trades were designed to make 40% for the year - it just seems silly not to take the money and run now, on March 19th.

You are not supposed to have 64 out of 66 winners in 6 weeks, you are not supposed to make 3/4 of what you anticipate for the year in 6 weeks - that is NOT how the markets are supposed to work! When the ma...

Oxen Group Trades

The Oxen Report: Five Keys to Fundamental Day Trading

March 19th, 2010 11:05 am

Identifying the Fundamentals

Stocks move under the influence various factors that we can use to identify stocks that are likely to move 3-5% in a single day. Even t...

The Options Report

By Andrew Wilkinson

Best Buy Option Investors Condone Broker Upgrade in Bullish Action

March 19th, 2010 4:41 pm

Today’s tickers: BBY, DNDN, GLD, BAC, AET, BA & NBR

BBY - Best Buy Co., Inc. – Shares of the world’s largest electronics retailer rallied 2% to $41.25 during the trading session after receiving an upgrade to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’ at Goldman Sachs Group where analysts increased BBY’s target share price to $47.00 from $44.00. Options traders employed a few different bullish tactics to position for continued upward movement in the price of the underlying stock through expiration in April. Plain-vanilla call buyers targeted the April $44 strike to purchase 5,100 calls for an average premium of $0.55 apiece. These investors stand ready to accrue profits if Best Buy’s share price increases 8% from the current value to exceed the effective breakeven point on the calls at $44.55 by expirati...

Insider Zone

Insiders: March to Exit

March 15th, 2010 6:49 pm

By Ilene

Let's take a look at Insider Buying and Selling over the last week or so. These are screen shots from Finviz - the significant buys against a green background first and significant sells against the pink background second. All the buys fit into my screen shot but the sells did not. Click here to see all the sells.

Note that the largest buy in the group, for KITD was at a price of 9.73 (KITD is currently at 11.54). The buy was part of an Equity Offering rather than an open market purchase. Tuzman Kaleil Isaza's (KITD's Chairman and Chief Exec. Officer) history of buys is http://www.insidercow.com/ more from Insider

OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of March 15th 2010

March 15th, 2010 8:55 am

This post is for live trades and daily comments.

To learn more about the swing trading portfolio (strategy, membership etc.), please click here

- Optrader

...

more from OpTrader

March 2010
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Feb	«-»
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8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

19,938 Newsletter subscribers

As Seen On:

About Phil:

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...

Learn more About Phil >>

About Ilene:

Ilene is editor and affiliate program coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site (blogroll, archives, more). Contact Ilene to learn about our affiliate and content sharing programs.

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Note: The material presented in this commentary is provided for informational purposes only and is based upon information that is considered to be reliable. However, neither Philstockworld, LLC (PSW) nor its affiliates warrant its completeness, accuracy or adequacy and it should not be relied upon as such. Neither PSW nor its affiliates are responsible for any errors or omissions or for results obtained from the use of this information. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Neither Phil, Optrader or anyone related to PSW is a registered financial adviser and they may hold positions in the stocks mentioned, which may change at any time without notice. Do not buy or sell based on anything that is written here, the risk of loss in trading is great.

This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security or other financial instrument. Securities or other financial instruments mentioned in this material are not suitable for all investors. Any opinions expressed herein are given in good faith, are subject to change without notice, and are only intended at the moment of their issue as conditions quickly change. The information contained herein does not constitute advice on the tax consequences of making any particular investment decision. This material does not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situations or needs and is not intended as a recommendation to you of any particular securities, financial instruments or strategies. Before investing, you should consider whether it is suitable for your particular circumstances and, as necessary, seek professional advice.

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