Options Combo Trade On Genworth Sees Further Upside In Shares
by Option Review - March 11th, 2013 1:18 pm
Today’s tickers: GNW, EZCH & F
GNW - Genworth Financial, Inc. – Shares in Genworth Financial increased as much as 11.2% in the early going on Monday, touching a fresh 52-week high of $10.94 on the back of an upgrade to ‘sector outperform’ at Scotia Capital. The insurer’s shares have increased more than 30% since the beginning of March as investors position for the provider of mortgage guaranties to benefit from strengthening in the U.S. housing market. One options combination strategy initiated on Genworth this morning looks for shares in the name to potentially rise another 35% by September expiration. The trader appears to have sold roughly 5,400 put options at the Sep. $9.0 strike in order to offset the cost of purchasing a 5,400-lot Sep. $12/$15 strike call spread. Net premium required to initiate the bullish play netted out to zero, thus positioning the strategist to profit in the event of a near 10% upside move off today’s high of $10.94 to exceed $12.00. Maximum potential profits of $3.00 per contract are available on the position should GNW shares surge 37% to $15.00 by September expiration.
EZCH - EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. – Put options on the maker of Ethernet network processors are active this morning after Kerrisdale Capital announced a short position in the stock, sending shares in EZchip Semiconductor down more than 8.0% in the early going to an intraday low of $21.80. The shares have since rebounded sharply to trade up 0.50% on the session at $23.90 as of 12:35 p.m. ET. The most actively traded contracts on EZchip today are the Mar. $22 strike puts, with upwards of 6,200 lots in play versus open interest of 211 contracts. Time and sales data suggests most of the volume was purchased at an average premium of $0.38 apiece. The intraday recovery in shares of EZchip has not been kind to buyers of the $22 strike puts, with premium on the contracts roughly halving to $0.20 each by 12:45 p.m. ET. Traders long the $22 strike put…
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Sizable Ratio Call Spread Drives Up Volume In Ford Options
by Option Review - December 12th, 2012 2:54 pm
Today’s tickers: F, YMI & WMT
F - Ford Motor Co. – What appears to be a large one-by-three ratio call spread on Ford suggests one options market participant is looking for sizable, albeit limited, gains in the price of the automaker’s shares during the next five weeks. Ford Motor Co. shares are currently up 0.45% at $11.54 as of 12:55 p.m. ET. It looks like the options player purchased 25,000 calls at the Jan. 2013 $12.5 strike for a premium of $0.12 apiece, and sold 75,000 calls up at the $14 strike at a premium of $0.02 each. Net premium paid to establish the position amounts to $0.06 per contract and may be profitable in the event that Ford’s shares rally 9% off the current price to exceed the effective breakeven point at $12.56. Maximum potential profits of $1.44 per contract are available on the spread should shares in Ford jump more than 20% to settle at $14.00 at expiration next year. Shares in Ford last traded above $14.00 back in July 2011.
YMI - YM Biosciences, Inc. – Shares in the drug development company are up nearly 80% today at $2.89 after Gilead Sciences, Inc. agreed to purchase the Canadian biotechnology company in an all-cash deal valued at $510 million or $2.95 a share. Traders who purchased upside calls on YM Biosciences ahead of the deal saw the value of their contracts rise sharply along with the price of the underlying shares this morning. YMI call selling in the early going may be the work of traders taking substantial profits off the table. Time and sales data for transactions in the Dec. $2.5 strike calls back in November suggests traders purchased most of the 2,043 open contracts for an average premium of $0.05 apiece last month. The sale of at least 1,600 now in-the-money Dec. $2.5 strike calls this morning for an average premium of $0.40 each may mean traders are banking hefty gains that amount to eight times the original investment. Open interest in YMI options is largest in the Jan. 2013 $2.5…
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Bull Call Spread On LVS Looks For Q3 Earnings To Impress
by Option Review - October 25th, 2012 2:16 pm
Today’s tickers: LVS, CROX & F
LVS - Las Vegas Sands Corp. – Casino stocks are popping today in sympathy with Wynn Resorts Ltd. after that company posted better-than-expected third-quarter earnings, announced plans to double its regular quarterly dividend and declared a $7.50 a-share special cash dividend. Las Vegas Sands Corp., which is scheduled to release third-quarter results tomorrow, rallied as much as 4.5% on Thursday morning to hit $46.30 in the early going. One options player appears to be positioning for further near-term upside with the purchase of a bull call spread in the newly issued weekly options that expire one week from tomorrow. It looks like the trader purchased a 400-lot Nov. 02 ’12 $47.5/$50 call spread for a net premium of $0.54 per contract. The strategy makes money if shares in LVS increase 5% from the current level of $45.70 to top the effective breakeven point at $48.04, with maximum potential profits of $1.96 per contract available on the position should shares surge 9.4% to hit $50.00 by expiration next week.
CROX - Crocs, Inc. – Shares in plastic-clog maker, Crocs, Inc., are getting slammed today after the company’s fourth-quarter top and bottom line estimates came in lower than analysts expected. The stock is down more than 20% at $12.89 as of 12:05 p.m. in New York. Crocs reported better-than-expected third-quarter profits after the final bell on Wednesday, but missed expectations for revenue in the quarter. Front month put activity on CROX this morning suggests one or more traders are holding out hope for a mild recovery in the shares in the near term. The sale of around 1,800 puts at the Nov. $13 strike provides an average premium of $0.32 per contract to sellers, who keep the full amount of premium as long as shares in the shoe maker exceed $13.00 at expiration next month. The puts were sold within the first couple of minutes of the opening bell this morning…
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Sizable Put Spread Cautious On P&G Through Year End
by Option Review - October 24th, 2012 12:56 pm
Today’s tickers: PG, F & LL
PG - Procter & Gamble Co. – Consumer products giant, Procter & Gamble, is trading higher today in advance of the company’s first-quarter earnings report ahead of the opening bell on Thursday. Shares in P&G are currently up 1.25% to stand at $68.28 as of midday in New York. A sizable ratio put spread initiated on the stock this morning indicates one strategist is prepared for limited bearish movement in the price of the underlying through year end. It looks like the trader purchased 2,000 puts at the Dec. $67.5 strike for a premium of $1.22 apiece and sold 4,000 puts at the lower Dec. $65 strike at a premium of $0.56 each. Net premium paid to establish the position amounts to $0.10 per contract and provides downside protection – or profits – beneath a breakeven share price of $67.40 through December expiration. Maximum potential profits of $2.40 per contract are available on the ratio spread should P&G’s shares slide 4.8% from the current level to settle at $65.00 at expiration. Shares in Procter & Gamble last traded at $65.00 in the first week of August.
F - Ford Motor Co. – Shares in the automaker tacked on 1% this morning to stand at $10.10 by 10:50 a.m. ET on reports the company plans to close its last remaining vehicle-making plant in the United Kingdom. Near-term bullish positioning in Ford options straight out of the gate this morning suggests some traders anticipate further gains in the price of the underlying during the next couple of trading sessions. The most heavily trafficked of the Oct. 26 ’12 options contracts are the $10 strike calls, which changed hands more than 7,800 times against open interest of 2,843 lots. It looks like most of the in-the-money calls were purchased in the first 10 minutes of the trading session at an average premium of $0.17 apiece, thus preparing buyers to profit at expiration…
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Which Way Wednesday – 50 DMAs Face Tough Tests
by phil - July 11th, 2012 8:13 am
Saved by the 50 DMA's!
Who said investing is hard? 4 of our 5 major indexes fall in synch and stop dead at the 50 day moving average that we've been watching on our Big Chart for over two months now as bullish support. Yawn…
Of course, if you think this can possibly be result of individual decisions made by millions of global investors than it's you that need to wake up. This is a completely machine-driven market and that's a GOOD thing if you follow our charts, as they give you very clear indications of all the major inflection points.
I'm not at all a TA guy – I merely accept the fact that the markets are fixed and the moves are coordinated and we set our points accordingly according to our 5% Rule, which works best in Bot-driven markets. Since we only adjust our Big Chart once a year or less – it lets us dispense with all that TA BS in less than two minutes a day and move on to more important things like – FUNDAMENTALS!
What we can do, however, is combine our view of the Big Chart with some fundamentals to figure out what the market will do at serious inflection points. Note on Dave Fry's SPY chart, we get a good view of the weak 50 dma.
Before we despair, however, look at that upwardly jammin' 200 dma – that sucker is going to pop the index like it was hit with a tennis racket at right about 1,320 in about 2 weeks so we have a jittery sell-off in a choppy early earnings season to look forward to and then something good happening at the end of the month to spark a rally.
Oh sorry, I planned to conclude with that but it's so freakin' obvious – why waste time with exposition?
Going back to the Big Chart, you can see on the S&P (and the others) that we still have a constructively bullish "M" pattern where the lows are lining up in an up-trend that mirrors the rising 200 dma. Obviously, if we fail to hold these 50 dmas – the next stop is that 200 DMA, which is generally intersecting the 2.5% lines on each index but forget those – it's all about the NYSE, which is our broadest index and is already testing its 200 dma AND…
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Monday Monetary Madness – This is what the Yield’s Like when Fed Doves Cry
by phil - February 20th, 2012 6:37 am
Why do we scream at each other
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry – Prince
It's no coincidence that this week we will be hearing from Fed Governors Kocherllakota (1pm Tues), Hoenig (12:30 Weds), Plosser (1:30 Weds), and Bullard (9:15 Thurs) ahead of our 2-Year Note Auction (1pm Tues), 5-Year Note Auction (1pm Weds) and 7-Year Note Auction (1pm Thursday) as the Fed needs to bring out 4 of it's 5 most hawkish members to talk up the Dollar (by talking down QE3) to keep those rates paid as low as possible for Treasury.
Once the Hawks drive the rates down and the notes are sold, the Doves will once again be released to talk them back up by extolling the glories of QE3 – completely reversing whatever was said before just as the Hawks will once again be called upon to reverse what the Doves say at a later date – when they need rates to come back down. The joke of it all is that traders will react to each statement, every time, as if it's a "game changer" and adjust their positions to reflect the new reality of the moment. It reminds me of a quote from Orwell's 1984:
As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
After all, what…
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Wednesday Worries – Yentervention, Euro Style
by phil - February 8th, 2012 5:16 am
78.50 on the Dollar!
The Yen finally got back to 77 and EUR/CHF back to 1.21 so my theory that the BOJ has given up on the Dollar and moved to boosting the Euro is playing out nicely.
This does not make me more bullish (expecting falling Dollar to boost the markets) because, in the grand scheme of things, this is kind of like now there are two kids building a sand wall on the beach instead of one – sure it will last longer than the wall just one kid was building but, eventually, the tide will get it anyway or, as Jimi Hendrix said more poetically: "Castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually."
Once you start messing around with Forex markets, you are messing with major macro forces that are hard to control. Japanese banks have $7.5Tn of Japanese bonds at 1% – what happens to the value of those bonds if the BOJ does push the Yen down 10%? Who takes that $750Bn hit? What if rates go up to 2% – what's the value of the bonds then? Who will bail out the Japanese Banks when they have a multi-Trillion Dollar (several hundred Trillion Yen) hole in their balance sheets? Do Japanese spreadsheets even have room for Quadrillions? They are going to need it!
Then there's this Bloomberg article on the Central Banks, who have doubled their balance sheets since 2006 to $13.2Tn but, magically, have caused no inflation (according to Ben Bernanke – not according to people who actually buy food and stuff). China is now sitting on $4.5Tn of other people's TBills (mostly ours) and that's up $1.5Tn in a year. The ECB is right behind them with $3.6Tn and another $1Tn supposedly coming in the next EFSF round and the Fed has $2.9Tn plus whatever nonsense they are running off book.
So, how is it that WE are the bad currency here? If the Dollar is a problem, then China, who's GDP is only about $8Tn (optimistically, possibly $5.5Tn depending on who's measuring) is almost as insane as Japanese bankers and maybe more so as they are betting on our country's ability to pay and maintain the value of the Dollar (already a fail, right?). I suppose no one can ever recognize losses and just carry more and more junk…
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Jobs Report Drives Heavy Trading Traffic In Ford, General Motors Options
by Option Review - February 3rd, 2012 1:42 pm
Today’s tickers: F, GM, MAS & GILD
Options commentary to resume on Thursday February 9th.
F - Ford Motor Co. – The better-than-expected jobs number out this morning revved up investor appetite for automobile stocks, driving shares in Ford Motor Co. up 4.0% to $12.75. Call options on the U.S. automaker are flying off the shelves, with nearly 5 calls in play on the stock for each single put option traded. The single-largest transaction in Ford options appears to be a bull call spread that yields maximum possible profits if the price of the underlying rallies nearly 20.0% during the next few months to expiration. It looks like one trader purchased a 30,000-lot April $14/$15 call spread for a net premium of $0.15 per contract. The position may be profitable at expiration if shares in Ford Motor Co. climb 11.0% to surpass the effective breakeven price of $14.15. Maximum potential profits of $0.85 per contract are available on the spread should shares in the auto manufacturer surge 17.6% to exceed $15.00 by expiration. Overall options volume on Ford is up above 175,000 contracts just before 1:00 p.m. ET.
GM - General Motors Co. – GM’s shares are outperforming fellow U.S. automaker, Ford Motor Co., this afternoon, with the stock trading 8.4% higher on the session at $26.35 as of 12:55 p.m. in New York. Optimism spurred by this morning’s stronger-than-expected jobs report was followed by greater-than-usual options action in the name. A debit put spread in the March expiry, which may be an outright bearish bet…
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Friday Follies – No Jobs but Hey, Look at Facebook!
by phil - February 3rd, 2012 8:19 am
Distractions.
That's all we have lately. Greece's silly $171Bn loan is meant to distract us from Europe's $17Tn debt hole and the US continues to borrow $171Bn PER MONTH to cover it's deficit and we don't even talk about Japan as the debt climbs over 220% of their rapidly declining GDP and who knows what's going on in China but, generally, when you have double-digit declines in home prices on a monthly basis – there's going to be a problem down the road.
This may be my last bearish post before drinking the technical Kool-Aid this weekend and we've already selected 5 trades for our Members that will make 200-500% if the market keeps moving forward and there are still plenty of stocks we can make a lovely Buy List out of if this rally has legs – especially the way we like to bet, since our hedges allow us to make very nice returns, as long as we simply hold our current levels.
There's the rub though – are the current levels sustainable? The nice thing about consolidations like the one we've been having this year is that they firm up a floor and give us a very obvious exit point on the way down so we can move some of that sideline cash into play – as long as we hold 12,500 on the Dow and 1,300 on the S&P and 2,800 on the Nasdaq – pretty simple strategy, right?
Notice the 2nd row has our major indices priced in Euros and our third priced in Yen. My main issue has been that we've been much weaker than it seemed as the Dollar's relentless decline masked a downturn in the inflation-adjusted price of our stocks (and the weak Dollar also serves to inflate revenues reported by multinational companies) but, at the moment, we're at our breakout levels by any measure so we may as well go with the flow until we see a proper reversal.
First we need to get past our NFP report at 8:30 of course. I'm expecting a miss but will the market even care or will that just mean Uncle Ben has an excuse to pump up the QE according to their new "formula"?
Keep in mind that what Bernanke said last week regarding the Fed's system for determining policy boils down to – As long…
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Monday – Mubarak’s Mood May Move Morning Markets
by phil - January 31st, 2011 8:21 am
Is it safe?
I asked that question at the end of November in "Timid Tuesday – Is It Safe" and here we are, 60 days later and up 7.5% and, on the whole, feeling less safe than we did back then, when the Market Oracle and I seemed to be the only people concerned global inflation and sovereign default risks rising rapidly. Although we were playing the market bullishly, with our aggressive $10,000 Virtual Portfolio (and make sure you check out our brand new $25,000 Virtual Portfolio that begins today with a $100,000 goal by December 31st) we decided to try to take from $26,000 to $50,000 by Jan 21st (we only made $35,000), our Breakout Defense Plays (5,000% in 5 Trades or Less) and our Secret Santa’s Inflation Hedges – it was with one hand on the exit door at all times. As I said at the close of Timid Tuesday’s article: "This house of cards is teetering folks – please be careful out there!"
That was 60 days ago. We’re a lot older now and have learned a lot about the World since then. We learned that China, Japan and the IMF are all ready, willing and able to buy the bonds of various EU nations. We learned that the Dollar can still fall 5% (was 81.44 on November 30th) further down despite Europe’s very obvious problems and Japan’s MASSIVE 200% Debt to GDP ratio. We learned that Uncle Ben will never stop printing money (until forced) and we learned that commodities can rise much faster than even our aggressive "Secret Santa" plays anticipated, with every one of our hedges (XHB, XLE, DBA and XLF) already over our year-end targets, all on track for gains well over 100%.
After watching our Alpha 2 pattern break (as I predicted it would on Monday morning) for the week, we went a lot more bearish on Thursday when I said in that morning post:
Keep in mind that gold and silver are our defensive plays. In Member Chat yesterday, Jromeha mentioned he’s 80% in cash and 85% short the market on the 20% in play and I said I thought that was an excellent way to play what I felt was a blow-off top after the Fed. We added 2 disaster hedges yesterday, a TZA spread that pays 500% if we get to $17 by
…
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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...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
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