Call Buying On Sprint Amid Session Lows Well-Played As Shares Rebound
by Option Review - October 4th, 2011 2:09 pm
Today’s tickers: S, GS, RIMM & CCL
S - Sprint Nextel Corp. – Seemingly well-timed call buying on Sprint in the first hour of the trading session has seen the value of options held by one or more bullish investors appreciate intraday. Shares in Sprint Nextel Corp. fell as much as 17.6% this morning to touch down at a new 52-week low of $2.25, but have since fought their way back to rally 2.2% to $2.79 just after 12:35 pm EDT. The stock tumbled this week on news the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier is committed to buying at least 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years, a deal estimated to cost around $20 billion, as reported in today’s Wall Street Journal. Concerns regarding the terms of the deal were reflected in the steep selloff that ensued in Sprint shares. But, activity in Jan. 2012 contract call options this morning suggests some traders were ready to position for a rebound in the battered stock. It looks like investors purchased around 18,400 calls at the Jan. 2012 $2.5 strike for an average premium of $0.57 apiece, against previously existing open interest of 9,650 contracts. The calls that had earlier cost an average of $0.57 to purchase now require $0.76 per contract roughly two hours later. Premium on the calls should continue to rise should Sprint’s shares extend their recovery in the months remaining to January 2012 expiration. Options traders populating Sprint Nextel Corp. are trading roughly three calls on the wireless provider to each single put in action. Options implied volatility is up 30.3% to arrive at 119.8% this afternoon.
GS - The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. – Shares in Goldman Sachs are well off their lows of the session, having earlier dropped as much as 6.45% to a 31-month low of $84.27. The stock remains firmly in the red, however, down 2.1% at $88.18 as of 11:30 am in New York. Not surprisingly, options on financial stocks and the XLF are some of the most active…
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn 
del.icio.us
DiggOptions Suggest Carnival Corp. Rally Is Running On Empty
by Option Review - August 11th, 2011 3:40 pm
Today’s tickers: CCL, ELX, OVTI & KKR
CCL - Carnival Corp. – Shares in the provider of cruise vacations are up 3.0% at $30.30 in early-afternoon trade, but options activity on the stock indicates the rally may lose steam. Investors appear to be selling in- and out-of-the-money calls on the cruise operator today perhaps on the expectation that today’s stock market rally represents but a brief respite from painful market pullbacks on the horizon. Abundant signs the market is slowing coupled with potential debt disasters overseas could dampen consumers’ willingness to spend hard-earned money on a non-essential cruise vacation. Shares in Carnival currently hover just above Wednesday’s fresh 52-week low of $29.35. Traders expecting Carnival’s shares to sink below $30.00 by expiration next month sold some 8,500 calls at the September $30 strike to pocket an average premium of $1.80 per contract. Call sellers keep the full amount of premium received as long as CCL’s shares fail to exceed $30.00 at expiration day. Premium received on the sale acts as a buffer against potentially uncapped losses to the upside, but protection gives way in the event that shares exceed the effective breakeven price of $31.80. Call selling spread to the higher September $32 strike where some 200 lots sold for an average premium of $0.92 a-pop. Reminders of the strong headwinds to growth going forward would likely once again spur investors to abandon ship on consumer discretionary names such as Carnival. The call options sold today expire several days ahead of CCL’s third-quarter earnings report on September 20.
ELX - Emulex Corp. – Shares in the provider of networking convergence solutions and equipment rose 1.6% this afternoon to $6.92, led higher by the broad market rally in U.S. stocks and Cisco’s better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings report. Emulex is slated to post its…
$25,000 Virtual Portfolio – Week 21 – Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!!!
by Phil - July 2nd, 2011 6:39 am
We are over our $50,000 mark and right on schedule at the halfway mark! Not bad considering we began with our aggressive $10,000 virtual portfolio last year, which we ran up to $36,630 – put that $11,630 back in the virtual bank and began this year in February with a $25,000 Virtual Portfolio.
The last major update to our virtual portfolio was back on May 21st. We do send out Alert updates on a regular basis and discuss the trade ideas daily in Member Chat. Now we can start July off with a clean $50,000 Virtual Portfolio with the same goal – to double up in 6 months but sticking to the same small allocation hit and run trade ideas that we used (mostly) in the first half. I urge you to read the original post and the update if you haven’t already to get an idea of what we are trying to learn by following this "hyper-aggressive" virtual portfolio model.
As promised, it has certainly been a wild ride and our last Alert Update from June 23rd left us off with $95,072 worth of closed transaction and a virtual net balance of $45,972, with about $49,000 worth of unrealized losses in our still-open positions.
Getting that close to goal with a week to go put us in shut-down mode and we didn’t do too much trading last week but we did close the following transactions, which amounted to mainly closing out all of our losing trades for the year, charging them off against our $95,072 worth of winners that we already cashed out. Our goal was to get those losses under $45,000, so that we’d be left with $50,000 cash: …
Bears Tackle Exxon Mobil Options, Bulls Climb Aboard Carnival Corp.
by Option Review - June 21st, 2011 4:04 pm
Today’s tickers: XOM, CCL, WYN & VRSN
XOM - Exxon Mobil Corp. – A large bearish options play on the world’s largest corporation indicates one strategist is positioned for shares in Exxon Mobil to fall ahead of August expiration. The investor responsible for the sizable ratio put spread on the oil and gas company may be taking an outright bearish stance on the stock, or could be hedging a long position in the underlying ahead of XOM’s July 28 second-quarter earnings report. Exxon Mobil’s shares are currently up 1.3% to stand at $80.75 just before 11:45am in New York. It looks like the options trader picked up 7,500 puts at the August $77.5 strike for a premium of $1.79 each, and sold 15,000 puts at the lower August $72.5 strike at a premium of $0.78 apiece. The net cost of the ratio spread reduces to $0.23 per contract, thus positioning the investor to profit if shares in XOM decline 4.3% in the next couple of months to breach the effective breakeven price of $77.27 at expiration. Maximum potential profits of $4.77 per contract are available to the trader should shares plunge 10.2% to settle at $72.50 at expiration in August. The ratio of twice as many short puts suggests the investor sees limited bearish movement in the price of the underlying stock. More significant share price erosion than the put player expects could result in losses on the position in the event that shares in Exxon Mobil drop 16.1% in the next nine weeks to slip beneath the lower breakeven price of $67.73 by expiration day in August. Other signs of investor pessimism on XOM cropped up in the August $85 strike call where is appears some 2,600 contracts sold for an average premium of $0.70 a-pop. Options implied volatility on the stock is off its lows of the session, but remains 8.5% lower on the day at 18.73% as of 11:55am.…
Contrarians Scoop up Carnival Corp. Call Options
by Option Review - February 22nd, 2011 4:11 pm
Today’s tickers: CCL, XLF, IRM & WAC
CCL - Carnival Corp. – Shares in the cruise company sank 8.3% this afternoon to touch an intraday low of $41.90, but it looks like some options traders expect Carnival Corp. to encounter fairer seas ahead of July expiration. More than 3,400 calls changed hands at the July $47 strike in the first half of the trading session, which is more than twice the number of contracts of open interest at that strike. It looks like the majority of the contracts, or some 2,600 of the calls, were purchased for an average premium of $1.89 apiece. Contrarians positioning for a rebound are prepared to make money should shares in CCL surge 15.0% off today’s low of $42.50 to surpass the average breakeven price of $48.89 ahead of July expiration. Carnival last traded up at a 52-week high of $48.14 back on January 6, 2011. The firm is one month away from reporting earnings for the first quarter before the market opens for trading on March 22, 2011. The sharp decline in shares today and the rise in demand for calls on the stock helped lift the overall reading of options implied volatility on Carnival 23.1% to 31.32% by 1:30pm in New York trading.
XLF - Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF – Three large blocks of XLF put options changed hands within the first 20 minutes of the trading session, and appear to be the foundation for a sizable bearish put butterfly spread. Shares in the XLF, an exchange-traded fund designed to track the performance of the Financial Select Sector of the S&P 500 Index, declined as much as 2.9% during the session thus far to touch an intraday low of $16.68. The put ‘fly yields maximum benefit for one investor if shares in the…
Bullish Players Gorge on Apple Calls
by Option Review - June 22nd, 2010 4:06 pm
Today’s tickers: AAPL, APC, GE, CCL, EMC, RAH, EEM, WAG, FTR, OMX & JPM
AAPL – Apple, Inc. – Bulls sank their teeth into Apple call options today in order to position for continued appreciation in the price of the underlying through August expiration. The iPhone maker’s shares increased as much as 2.10% during the trading session to secure an intraday high of $275.97 perhaps on news the firm sold 3 million iPads in the first 80 days since the product was introduced to the U.S. marketplace. Apple optimists expecting shares to surpass yesterday’s new 52-week high of $279.01 purchased 1,100 calls at the August $280 strike for a hefty premium of $14.64 apiece. Investors long the calls are positioned to profit if Apple’s shares rally 6.75% over today’s intraday high of $275.97 to trade above the average breakeven point at $294.64 by August expiration. Bulls anticipating more significant share price gains by August expiration purchased approximately 2,500 calls at the higher August $290 strike for an average premium of $9.70 each. Investors long the August $290 strike contracts make money if the iPod maker’s shares surge 8.6% to exceed the average breakeven price of $299.70 by expiration day. Finally, uber-bulls bought 2,000 calls at the higher August $300 strike for an average premium of $7.38 a-pop. Traders holding the August $300 strike calls stand ready to accumulate profits as long as Apple’s shares jump 11.4% to trade above the average breakeven point on the calls at $307.38 by expiration day in August. Nearly 200,000 option contracts changed hands on Apple, Inc. by 3:00 pm (ET), with call options trading 1.35 times to each single put option in play.
APC – Anadarko Petroleum Corp. – Shares of the independent oil and gas exploration and production company which holds a 25% stake in BP’s leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico dropped 4.35% late in the session to stand at $41.56 as of 3:15 pm (ET). Despite the decline in the price of the underlying today one optimistic option strategist positioned himself to one day bask in the light at the end of the tunnel by enacting a bullish debit call spread in the November contract. APC’s shares plunged 53.4% from a high of $74.14 on April 20 – the day the leak was triggered – down to a 52-week low of $34.54 on June 9, 2010. Since bottoming out on…
2010 Outlook – A Tale of Two Economies
by Phil - December 27th, 2009 6:54 am
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." – Charles Dickens, 1859
Dickens famous novel (which was originally written as a weekly series in 31 installments) depicts life in the time of the French revolution but was also a parable, meant to warn the British aristocracy that they should not ingore the parallels to the social inequities that existed at the time in England. Dickens warned the nobles that the seeds of revolution were planted through unjust acts and surely there would be a time of reaping yet to come.
It is said that the French Revolution was sparked by outrage over a statement by the Queen Mary Antoinette who, when told that the peasants had no bread to eat, supposedly replied (she never actually said this) "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche" or "Then let them eat cake." It’s hard for us to imagine the impact of this statement in modern times but "peasants" were 90% of the population at the time and bread was 90% of what they ate, consuming 50% of the average family’s income (people weren’t silly enough to pay for housing back then – they just found a bit of land, bought some wood and nails and built their own homes). Brioche was a luxury combination of bread enriched with flour and butter so the statement "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche" implies both lack of caring and cluelessness on the part of the Queen.
The United States had what passes for a revolution between 2006 and 2008 as we threw out the Republicans and went with a Democrat-controlled government. While the Bush administration, the Republican Congress and Fox News may have been as clueless as a French Queen to the plight of the people – the fact of the matter is that the base pay…
Bulls Head For Developed Markets ETF
by Option Review - July 13th, 2009 4:16 pm
Today’s tickers: EFA, HAL, VIAB, IR, EXPD, GE, CCL, V, & XRX
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
(