PENN – Shares of the gaming and racing company have lifted 8% to $30.79 amid gains experienced by a number of casino operators today. PENN edged onto our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after one investor initiated a put spread in the October contract. The spread was established through the purchase of 6,550 puts at the October 25 strike price for 2.02 each against the sale of 6,550 puts at the lower October 20 strike for a premium of 79 cents. The net cost of the transaction amounts to 1.23 and yields a maximum potential profit of 3.77 if shares declined to $20.00 by expiration. Such a trade could represent downside protection by an individual who is long the stock. Or, it could potentially represent a medium-term bearish position by a trader hoping to profit in the event of a 22% decline in shares through the breakeven point at $23.77 by expiration. – Penn National Gaming, Inc.
CIT – The bank holding company’s shares have rallied nearly 7% to $3.38 today, attracting some bullish option players seeking to benefit from further gains in the stock. Call-volume at the near-term June 5.0 strike price ballooned upward by more than 48,000 as investors purchased at least 37,200 contracts for an average premium of 23 cents each. The calls will begin to yield profits to investors if the underlying shares can increase 55% from the current price and surpass the breakeven point at $5.23 by expiration. Optimism spread to the July 5.0 strike where 5,500 calls were coveted for 40 cents apiece. Finally, the October 5.0 strike attracted some bullish action as well as some 2,000 calls appear to have been bought for 65 cents per contract. Option implied volatility climbed as high as 192% during the trading day up from Friday’s closing value of 151%. – CIT Group, Inc.
EXPE– Shares of the online travel company have climbed more than 6% to $15.88 amid renewed takeover chatter reported by one source. Option traders on EXPE have braced themselves for bullish movement in the stock as some 2,300 calls were purchased at the near-term June 17.5 strike price for an average premium of 35 cents per contract. In order to profit from a long-call position by expiration shares of Expedia must double today’s rally in order to breach the…
SPY SPDR Trust Series – So implied volatility as measured by the fear gauge known as the VIX, the CBOE volatility index has come screaming off today after a nerve-soothing employment report. The VIX is down 2.17 points today to 31.25. The ongoing rally for equities is likely a snapback against an Armageddon-like scenario priced in to stocks throughout the first quarter. With a lessening in the economic contraction and today’s data icing the cake, investors have thrown in the towel on the bear market and have reduced demand for protection through puts. However, in the S&P index, one investor seems to feel that the rebound won’t extend beyond September and has bought a sizeable chunk of protective puts. The SPDR trades at one-tenth the value of the underlying index and today is 2.5% to the better at 93.15. Some 72,000 put options at the September contract have been purchased at the 75.0 strike for premiums anywhere between 1.84 and 2.05. Breakeven in the worst case example would be at 72.96. That would need a decline of 21.6% to come good. At some point, investors will sit around the camp fire and have a rethink after this huge counter-trend rally. What’s next?
F Ford Motor Company – The only big-three auto company in the US to remain standing without federal aid has climbed 2% to $6.20 per share today. The bullish move in shares could be due to the news that Ford may receive as much as $440 million in government loans. The money would be utilized to facilitate the conversion of a Michigan SUV (sport utility vehicle) factory to one that builds small, fuel-efficient automobiles. Ford edged onto our ‘most active by options volume’ market scanner later on in the afternoon after one individual was seen getting bullish on the stock. In the January 2011 contract the trader was seen shedding 55,000 put options at the January 2.5 strike price for a premium of 80 cents apiece. The investor pockets the premium today as he does not see shares declining through $2.50 over the next year and a half. Option implied volatility on Ford is currently at 85%.
DELL Dell, Inc. – The just-in-time provider of personal computers attracted bullish options investors despite the more than 3.5% decline in shares to $10.65. Perhaps individuals looking for…
Oddly enough, it was MUCH worse than the original indication that started this leg of our rally when we were told that every bank passed the stress test but the results were skillfully leaked in dribs and drabs interspersed with rumors that things were much worse in such a way that there is a general sense of relief that "only" $75BBn of additional capital must be raised and almost half of that by Bank of America, where $34Bn represents just 2% of their assets (although it is 40% of their current market cap).
While that level of dillution will keep us out of BAC for now, there’s no reason to not invest in C, who "only" need $5.5Bn against their $2Tn in assets although that is still 25% of their current market cap. For the banks that do need capital, they have until June 8th to present a plan for raising it and until November 9th to implement the plan, which must maintain the target capital ratios through December 2010 after which we can assume they will again be allowed to run wild. The banks are all coming up with various schemes to raise cash but the ones on the left need none at all.
Rather than go into a huge explanation about each pick, I’ll just say that I’m favoring banks that I feel have room to run and have not already been overbought. I discussed with members yesterday that it is ridiculous to assume that banks will get back to their 2007 levels as those earnings came under unique and ideal market conditions which are not likely to be repeated in the next decade so I was disgusted with Cramers BUYBUYBUY rant on the banks last night and I’m looking for a far more conservative play and we will be shorting some of the high flyers as Cramer herds his sheeple into overvalued positions.
We got out of our bullish bank plays this week and our $100K Hedged Virtual Portfolio, which was focused on financials in round 1, made huge gains and we (contrary to Cramer’s advice) took them off the table. Now that we have FACTS, we can reinvest with more confidence. I am not advocating jumping into all of these positions ahead of the weekend, we still want to see stability next week but we can scale in…
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `to be master -- that's all.'"
Lewis Carroll
I thought it was interesting that Narayan Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, decided to print a recovery assertion now. This seems almost like a followup to the Recession Myth Claim put forward a few years ago by Deregulator in Chief Phil Gramm: ...
The S&P 500 got off to weak start and, after retracing a modest morning rally, spent most of the day in the shallow red with an intraday low of 0.63%. But in the last seven minutes of trading, the index recovered enough to a make a small gain of 0.14%. This is the fourth advance, the first was Monday's 1.60 surge, but the last three have ranged from 0.05% to 0.17% with today's close near the high of the miserly three-day series.
The index is now up 5.02% for 2012, which is 6.93% off the interim closing high.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 95.2% above the March 2009 closing low and 15.6% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
Below are two charts of the index, with and without the 50 and 200-day moving averages.
And it was shaping up to be such a good year. According to the latest just released HSBC hedge fund performance update, increasingly more funds are starting to lose it, certainly for the month, but increasingly more for the year. How many LPs will be eager to keep on paying 2% management fees (forget performance) to funds who at best are long AAPL (at least 226 of them), and at worst have underperformed the S&P, for the second year in a row, by anywhere from 5 to 15%?
TIF - Tiffany & Co., Inc. – A surprise earnings miss and a reduced full-year profit and sales forecast from luxury jewelry retailer, Tiffany & Co., took some of the luster out of its shares today, with the stock trading down 8.5% at $56.55 as of 11:50 a.m. in New York. Options activity on Tiffany this morning suggests mixed sentiment on the st...
RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK) today announced that it has reached an agreement with the Washington State Attorney General over discontinued e-commerce practices. In accordance with the settlement agreement, RealNetworks has committed to:
Discontinuing the use of pre-checked boxes for purchases of RealNetworks subscription products; Spelling out more clearly the material terms of RealNetworks product offerings; Offering online cancellation of subscription offerings; Enhancing RealNetworks customer support guidelines regarding cancellation. Statement from Thomas Nielsen, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
"About two years ago, the Washington State Attorney General's Office contacted us regarding concerns they had with some of our e-commerce practices.
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
First we'll go to the technicals. Back in mid April I had opined a 'bear flag' formation was being created. [Apr 17, 2012: Potential Bear Flag Forming] But the market being the difficult beast it is, head faked everyone and rather than a break down from said flag it first went UP and nearly touched yearly highs. This caused everyone to think the bear flag had failed…. only to lead to a horrid May in the market. Generally a bear flag will resolve relatively quickly but the longer...
Despite the fact that U.S. equities are well-positioned and well-supported to go up, once again it is the headlines out of Europe—especially Greece—that are scaring off investors. Some are saying that it is now likely (and even desirable) that Greece will default on all its sovereign debt, withdraw from the euro, and severely devalue its domestic currency (Drachma?). This will allow them to operate a balanced budget while pumping cash into growth initiatives, rather than suffer the ravages of Germany-mandated austerity.
Some say, so what? Greece makes up only about 2% of the Eurozone’s overall economy. Nevertheless, you might say that t...
Markets died and then rallied to flat again as European leaders “prepared contingencies” for a possible Grexit
Markets died hard and fast earlier today as major indexes registered as much as 1.5% of losses after news that Euro zone officials were unofficially “preparing contingencies” for a Greek exit from the Euro. Unofficial statements were not enough to keep markets down however, as major indexes rallied back to flat levels by the end of the day.
So the world continues to wait on Europe, as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEACA:SPY) gained .05%, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSEARCA:...
Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here
NEW: Ilene is available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.
Here is this week's test version of the latest newsletter. We apologize for some formatting issues that need to be worked out. Please tell us what you think.
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
In this article, please revisit an article written two years ago titled, "The Calm Before the Storm." This article focused on the patent cliff that was looming in the pharmaceutical industry, that was later picked up by the New York Times and several other bloggers! Subsequent articles were written about big pharma company's revenue streams, and the pros and cons of of their later stage pipelines. Other articles have also attempted to identify smaller biotechs with the potential to reap big reward...
My last weekend update is dated from January 30 so after a long hiatus, here is an update of our virtual portfolio. Since the last update, we have closed the AA Money portfolio due to a lack of enthusiasm (and activity) and I have stopped tracking the FAS strangle as the low VIX makes it hard to get rewarded for the risk! But we have added a small $5KP virtual portfolio which does not use any margin.
FAS Money
We have had to recover from a big move up by FAS and a low VIX which keeps option prices low. But the portfolio has gaine about 10% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $5499.00
IWM Money
Not a lot of activity in this portfolio where the main focus is on the large IWM BCS. But the portfolio has grown over 20% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $1998.00
$5KP Portfolio
This is the virtual portfolio that replaced the AA Money portfolio. It does not use margin and we will keep holdings under $5K.
AAPL $50K P...
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
(blogroll, archives,
more).
Contact Ilene to learn about our affiliate and
content sharing
programs.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn 
del.icio.us
Digg
Finally the official results are in!
While that level of dillution will keep us out of BAC for now, there’s no reason to not invest in C, who "only" need $5.5Bn against their $2Tn in assets although that is still 25% of their current market cap. For the banks that do need capital, they have until June 8th to present a plan for raising it and until November 9th to implement the plan, which must maintain the target capital ratios through December 2010 after which we can assume they will again be allowed to run wild. The banks are all coming up with various schemes to raise cash but the ones on the left need none at all.![[Commentary]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-DP568_oj_rou_E_20090504185544.jpg)
We got out of our bullish bank plays this week and our $100K Hedged Virtual Portfolio, which was focused on financials in round 1, made huge gains and we (contrary to Cramer’s advice) took them off the table. Now that we have FACTS, we can reinvest with more confidence. I am not advocating jumping into all of these positions ahead of the weekend, we still want to see stability next week but we can scale in…
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
(
