JPMorgan-Bull Constructs Three-Legged Combo Play as Shares Rise

by Andrew Wilkinson - January 5th, 2010 4:31 pm

Today’s tickers: JPM, LVS, S, WFC, UAUA, NBR, PTEN, FIG, PCS, DAL & TPX

JPM – JPMorgan Chase & Co. – A three-legged combination play suggests one investor anticipates a significant rally in JPMorgan’s shares within the next few months. The stock is trading 2% higher this afternoon to $43.65. The trader utilized both calls and puts in the March contract in order to position for potential bullish movement in shares of the underlying. The investor sold 15,000 puts at the March 40 strike for an average premium of 1.18 apiece to partially offset the cost of buying a call spread. The call spread involved the purchase of 15,000 calls at the now in-the-money March 43 strike for an average premium of 2.58 each, marked against the sale of 15,000 calls at the higher March 47 strike for 90 cents premium apiece. The net cost of the three-legged strategy amounts to 90 cents per contract. Maximum potential profits of 3.50 per contract – a grand total of $5.25 million – are available to the investor if JPM’s shares rally through $47.00 by expiration day. Profits amass above the breakeven price of $43.50. The short put stance at the March 40 strike implies the investor is willing to have shares put to him at $40.00 apiece if the put options land in-the-money.

LVS – Las Vegas Sands Corp. – Reports of a large 48% increase in December revenue at Sands China – the Macau unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp. – pushed shares of LVS up 9.5% to $18.21 today. Option bulls, hoping good fortune and accurate foresight are on their side looked to the February contract to initiate plain-vanilla call buying strategies. The now in-the-money February 18 strike had roughly 2,700 calls picked up for an average premium of 1.29 apiece. The higher February 19 strike was the hot spot for bulls looking to bet on an LVS rally. Out of the 19,500 calls traded at that strike, more than 12,200 contracts were purchased for about one dollar per contract. Call options exchanged at the February 19 strike vastly outnumber previously existing open interest at that strike of just 2,725 lots. The higher February 20 strike received bullish interest as well, with about 2,000 contracts coveted by traders for an average premium of 66 cents each. As of 3:15 pm (EDT), investors traded just under 127,000 option contracts of LVS, which represents approximately 21%…

Tags: DAL, FIG, JPM, LVS, NBR, PCS, PTEN, S, TPX, UAUA, WFC

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Friday Already?

by Phil - May 22nd, 2009 8:29 am

Man what a fun week, I can’t believe it’s ending so soon!

We are already on vacation, having followed our plan to cash out at the bottom yesterday anticipating some short covering today that would take up the markets.  Actually, we took some bullish plays into yesterday’s close as it was such an obvious set-up for a stick save and there was so much bad news out already that we weren’t too worried about more.  My hot streak continued as I posted to members at 11:13, with the Dow on the rise at 8,267: "OIH now at the 5% rule (94) and XLE at -4% (47.50 is 5%) and Nas at 2.5% rule (1,685) along with RUT (477) while S&P needs 880, Dow needs 8,220, and NYSE 5,725.  Those are the points that should hold and bounce us at least back to -2% but, after the way they behaved at 1.5%, we need to see them retake -1.25 before we’re even slightly safe."

The Nas bottomed out at 1,678 at 2:45 but came back 20 points to -1.89%, the Russell hit 474 at the same time but finishe down 1.66%, the S&P hit 880 on the nose at 2:53 before recovering to -1.68%, the Dow hit 8,224 at 2:52 but rallied back to down 1.54% and the NYSE bottomed out at 5,728 at 2:58 before making it back to -1.53.  Now I know there are lots of stock services that can tell you exactly what the market will do for the day 3 days in a row and I’m certain that there’s no way to profit from that kind of information anyway so, whatever you do - don’t sign up for this service (see, we are cleverly experimenting with reverse psychology!).  We took quick profits on our DIA calls into the close but left our DDM (ultra-long Dow) calls on for fun and they should get a nice pop this morning.  We also couldn’t resist some great buy opportunities during that sell-off and we picked up new, hedged positions in HMY, FIG, DRYS, RF, DAL and UYG in addition to our Dow plays.  As we also sold the Dow puts to cover our longer covers - we ended up pretty darned bullish after being 100% bearish at the open.  We are flexible if nothing else!

Our futures are looking pretty good this morning despite BKUNA being siezed by regulators in a move that will take a $4.9Bn bite out of the FDIC.  The FDIC sold the company’s banking…

Tags: CHINA, DAL, DIA, Dollar, DRYS, FIG, HMY, National Debt, Oil, Philstockworld, RF, USO, UYG

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