Bullish Options Trade On American Eagle Looks For Shares To Extend Run
by Option Review - October 3rd, 2012 1:29 pm
Today’s tickers: AEO, HON & GDP
AEO - American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. – A large long-term bullish options play on teen retailer, American Eagle Outfitters, Inc., near the open looks for shares in the name to potentially reach levels not seen since 2007 by January 2014. Shares in American Eagle soared in 2012, rising approximately 90% since the first week of the year to touch a four-year high of $23.94 back on September 19th. Though off their highest level of the year, shares in AEO increased 2.6% this morning to $21.56 after the stock was rated new ‘Market Outperform’ with a 12-month target share price of $27.00 at Avondale Partners LLC. A three-legged options combination spread initiated on AEO at the start of the session prepares one options player to profit should the price of the underlying continue to push higher during the next calendar year. The strategist responsible for the single-largest transaction in American Eagle options today appears to have sold 5,000 puts at the Jan. 2014 $18.5 strike in order to substantially reduce the cost of buying a 5,000-lot Jan. 2014 $22/$30 call spread. Net premium paid to establish the position amounts to $0.20 per contract and prepares the trader to make money above an effective breakeven price of $22.20. Maximum potential profits of $7.80 per contract are available on the spread should American Eagle’s shares gain 40% to top $30.00 by expiration in January 2014. The trader could wind up having 500,000 shares of the underlying stock put to him or her at expiration in the event of a sharp pullback in shares of the high-flyer to the $18.50-level and below.
HON - Honeywell International, Inc.– Shares in diversified industrials company, Honeywell International, Inc., are up 0.15% as of 11:50 a.m. in New York to stand at $61.53, adding to gains realized earlier in the week after the company agreed to take a 70% stake in Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Thomas Russell Co. for…
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GDPhursday – Don’t Get Excited, It’s Just A Revision
by phil - March 29th, 2012 8:14 am
My, my – things are getting ugly.
Not too much technical damage on the Big Chart so far but we have critical crosses of our 2.5% lines at S&P 1,400 and Nas 3,075 to watch. I think we'll hold the Nas unless AAPL takes a dive so, despite the 1% drop in Europe this morning (7:30) – I don't think today's the day the music dies.
We have our 3rd estimate of Q4 GDP this morning at 8:30 and I'm not expecting it to be better than the last 3% estimate – probably a bit worse as the data has been downhill since then. Clearly sentiment has turned a bit sour and, as I mentioned in yesterday's post – if this is all we can get out of the markets after our Central Banksters all held a QE revival meeting on Monday with promises of Trillions more free money – then we are pretty screwed.
Speaking of people who are soon to be screwed, oil speculators are about to get their gas handed to them as there are over 570M barrels worth of open contracts at the NYMEX scheduled for delivery in the next 3 months alone and we're already way over any prior level of storage capacity (Bespoke chart).
If Iran doesn't nuke the Strait of Hormuz very soon, this is going to turn ugly for those stuck with oil contracts as October 2013 barrels are still trading under $100 and 2015 contracts are under $90 – indicating no long-term support for all these speculative barrels. Yesterday, another 7M unwanted barrels piled up in inventories as consumers continue to cut back on gasoline they can no longer afford.
When I was on BNN earlier this month, oil was at $107 and my trade idea was to pick up the SCO April $29/33 bull call spread for $2.10, selling the April $30 puts for $1.35 to pay for it on the premise that oil wouldn't go over $110, where we begin to lose more than the net .75 cash and our max gain of $3.25 (433%) came around $105. We're at the halfway mark to April expiration and, with oil at $105, SCO is at $33.63 (our goal) and the April $29 calls are $5 and the $33 calls are $2 and $30 puts are .40 for net…
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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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Thursday Fix – Victory In Our Time!
by phil - October 27th, 2011 8:24 am
You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. – Winston Churchill
I do HAVE to say "I told you so!"
When I was interviewed on Monday and they asked why I’m bullish, I replied that "stimulus trumps everything" and that’s what we’ve been playing for, especially in our new White Christmas Portfolio, which will be off to a rockin’ start with the aggressive upside trades that I not only mentioned in yesterday’s post - which made easy fills yesterday morning, as the markets shook out the last of the weak hands on yet another rumor-driven dip.
We got our daily double on the AGQ calls, as expected and SSO fell all the way to $44.20 (150% profit on that trade if they finish Friday above $45) while FAS dropped $13.35 and that spread will be good for a 2,100% gain if FAS can get back to and hold $14 – which should be a snap thanks to our friends at the EU.
In the morning Alert to Members, I put up this cute little Gif to illustrate the day’s action and it was a real roller-coaster day but we stayed generally bullish, taking quick profits off our morning bear plays on DIA and USO. We added a bullish trade ideas for AMZN (complex spread), TNA (short Nov $40 puts at $3.60) but that was it for the day because my comment to Members at 11:01 was: "Dollar rejected at 76.80 – still hope for the bulls!"
Well, those bulls were us and we already had our bets in place from last week, when things were cheaper so there was nothing to do but watch as the markets took off like a rocket from that point forward. Heck, we were so bullish we even sold NFLX puts (Nov $67.50 puts for $3) as a bullish offset to a DXD hedge (which we’ll pull the bottom of today). On Monday we had picked up bullish trades on AAPL and GLW and I mentioned EWG in Friday’s post (those should be looking good this morning!) as well as our plays to go long in the Russell Futures at…
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Which Way Wednesday – Let’s Try Dylan’s Way!
by phil - August 10th, 2011 8:29 am
Kudos to Dylan Ratigan for losing his temper and telling the TRUTH:
Ratigan is everything a reporter used to be in the days when integrity mattered. He told CNBC to shove it rather than toe the line and push their snake oil and his show is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale media landscape. I love the way he sits there listening to the same political BS as we all do from his panel for 3 minutes and 45 seconds and then literally explodes in RIGHTEOUS anger. I often feel the same way and, as my Members know, I sometimes explode the same way but to see a host do it on TV (other than Jon Stewart) is just fantastic – it’s what this country needs if we are ever going to save ourselves – complete change in the system.
As Dylan says: "I have been coming on TV for 3 years doing this and the fact of the matter is that there is a refusal on both the Republican and Democratic side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being EXTRACTED – it’s being extracted through banking, it’s being extracted through trade, and it’s being extracted through taxation and there’s not a single politician that is willing to step forward and deal with this."
Yesterday was a ridiculous day in the markets, with the Dow rising 250 points, then falling 500 points and then rising 800 points into the close for a net gain of 429 points on the day. We had a lot of fun trading it but it’s sad to see our markets trading like a 3rd World country. I have warned Members for years that: "If our government pursues Asian-style Central Banking policies they will subject our markets to Asian-style market swings" (see "Stock Market Crash – Year One in Review – The Gathering Storm"). In July of 2009 I warned:
Our stock markets have already started trading like those crazy Asian markets. Why? Manipulation is why. Control of the media by government and business allows focused messages to go out to the people so investors can be stampeded in and out of the markets at the will of the people who control the message.
You need to look no further than yesterday’s insanity to…
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Magical Monday – All “Fixed”!
by phil - August 1st, 2011 8:11 am
Oh what BS!
Still, it’s BS we expected, isn’t it? What did I tell you in Friday Morning’s post? I said: "Our plan for the day (as we’ve been short all week) is to get back to cash for the weekend but I’m sure we’ll find some speculative upside plays (like USO at $37) to play (we already went long on Silver in the Morning Alert to Members)." I followed that up with my 9:40 Morning Alert to Members, where my specific trade ideas for the morning, while the market was plunging, were:
- USO Next week $36 calls are $1.45 so 10 of those in the $25KP with a stop at $1.20.
- TNA Aug $69/73 bull call spread is $2 and you can sell the $51 puts for $1.20 and that’s my favorite index play at the moment. Of course any bullish offset would work but this one is focused on the RUT and betting it won’t drop another 8% by Aug expiration (725).
How’s that for a bottom call? That was right into the panic lows and, at 9:48 I reiterated my call right at the dead bottom, saying to Members: "Volume is not very high – this is a retail panic so far. If you have short positions, strongly consider put tight stops on them (this includes the $25KP and Income Virtual Portfolio) as they put plenty of cash in your pocket and we can always find another layer of shorts if the RUT can’t hold 775."
At 9:50 my trade idea was selling PCLN weekly $545 calls at $3 which expired worthless that day for a 100% gain. At 9:52 we picked up the weekly (that day) QQQ $57 calls at .72 and we had a 100% gain on those by 11. At 9:56 we went short on the VIX with the Aug $19 puts at $1, at 10:16 we even made 5 bullish adjustments to our fairly conservative Income Virtual Portfolio, including selling 50 DIA Aug $116 puts for $110 ($5,500) and we’ll be pulling those right off the table this morning – but I’m getting ahead of myself…
At 11:25 we went for a Jan bull call spread on UNG and at 1:20 I put up my last long trade idea of the day, selling YRCW Jan $1 puts for .70 for a .30 net entry on the trucker. …
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A Bubble in Complacency
by ilene - January 30th, 2011 10:13 pm
Courtesy of John Mauldin, Thoughts From The Frontline
The Recent GDP Numbers – A Real Statistical Recovery
Consumer Spending Rose? Where Was the Income?
A Bubble in Complacency
Egypt
Rosie, Las Vegas, Phuket, and Bangkok
This week I had the privilege of being on the same panel with former Comptroller General David Walker and former Majority Leader (and presidential candidate) Richard Gephardt. A Democrat to the left of me and a self-declared nonpartisan to the right, stuck in the middle and not knowing where the unrehearsed conversation would take us. As it turned out, to a very interesting conclusion, which is the topic of this week’s letter. By way of introduction to those not familiar with them, David M. Walker (born 1951) served as United States Comptroller General from 1998 to 2008, and is now the Founder and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative. Gephardt served in Congress for 28 years, was House Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995 and Minority Leader from 1995 to 2003, running for president in 1988 and 2004.
Some housekeeping first. We have posted my recent conversation with George Friedman on the Conversations with John Mauldin web site. And on Saturday we will post the Conversation and transcript I just did with David Rosenberg and Lacy Hunt, which I think is one of the more interesting (and informative!) ones I have done. You can learn more about how to get your copy and the rest of the year’s Conversations (I have some really powerful ones lined up) by going to www.johnmauldin.com/conversations. Use the code “conv” to get a discount to $149 from the regular price of $199. (If you recently subscribed at $199 we will extend your subscription proportionately. Fair is fair.)
The Recent GDP Numbers – A Real Statistical Recovery
Now, before we get into our panel discussion (and the meeting afterward), let me comment on the GDP number that came in yesterday. This is what Moody’s Analytics told us:
“Real GDP grew 3.2% at an annualized pace in the fourth quarter of 2010. This was below the consensus estimate for 3.6% growth and was an improvement from the 2.6% pace in the third quarter. Private inventories were an enormous drag on growth, subtracting 3.7 percentage points; this bodes very well for the near-term outlook and means that current demand is very strong. Consumer spending, investment and…
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Stock World Weekly
by ilene - January 30th, 2011 8:23 am
Here’s this week’s Stock World Weekly. Enjoy! Comments welcome.
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Hugh Hendry On The “Near Certainty” Of European Interest Rate Rises
by ilene - January 21st, 2011 9:42 pm
Courtesy of Zero Hedge
Europe risks getting it wrong again on rate rises
From European Central Bank, posted first in the FT
The euro project has not gone according to plan. It reminds me of the story of the James Bond character Q, based on the British intelligence officer Charles Fraser-Smith. It was he who invented a compass for spies hidden in a button that unscrewed clockwise. The contraption was based on the simple yet brilliant theory that the unswerving logic of the German mind would never guess that something might unscrew the wrong way. This is really what happened with the euro. New member states were supposed to take lower German interest rates and invest their resources wisely to improve and deepen their productive capacity. Instead, they used the advantage to finance speculative asset bubbles. The peripheral nations of Europe turned the wrong way. The Germans are unhappy.
But, desperate to cling to monetary union, the other European sovereigns have opted to default on their spending promises to voters rather than impose a haircut on their financial creditors. In the 1920s the pay-off structure had been very different. The first world war took an intolerable toll on the typical household both in terms of the loss of life and financial well-being; everyone had become poorer. Accordingly, there was little willingness on the part of the ruling political class to force austerity measures to redress the fiscal imbalances. The people had suffered long enough. Consequently, there was much procrastination and fiscal deficits persisted way beyond the end of the war, making capital markets reluctant to accept the waning security of government paper and forcing the sovereign to rely on the central bank’s printing press.
This time around, however, the political class has concluded that the Greeks (especially the Greeks!) and the other peripheral states have done so well off the back of the euro project that it is their turn to shoulder the burden. They calculate that the social pain would be less severe than the financial costs of a debt default and/or a euro exit. Of course, this is to neglect the financial consequences of bailing out the financial sector in 2008 and its ensuing impact on the ordinary household. Can an analogy be drawn between the first world…
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12 Economic Collapse Scenarios That We Could Potentially See In 2011
by ilene - January 20th, 2011 12:56 pm
Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse
What could cause an economic collapse in 2011? Well, unfortunately there are quite a few "nightmare scenarios" that could plunge the entire globe into another massive financial crisis. The United States, Japan and most of the nations in Europe are absolutely drowning in debt. The Federal Reserve continues to play reckless games with the U.S. dollar. The price of oil is skyrocketing and the global price of food just hit a new record high. Food riots are already breaking out all over the world. Meanwhile, the rampant fraud and corruption going on in world financial markets is starting to be exposed and the whole house of cards could come crashing down at any time. Most Americans have no idea that a horrific economic collapse could happen at literally any time. There is no way that all of this debt and all of this financial corruption is sustainable. At some point we are going to reach a moment of "total system failure".
So will it be soon? Let’s hope not. Let’s certainly hope that it does not happen in 2011. Many of us need more time to prepare. Most of our families and friends need more time to prepare. Once this thing implodes there isn’t going to be an opportunity to have a "do over". We simply will not be able to put the toothpaste back into the tube again.
So we had all better be getting prepared for hard times. The following are 12 economic collapse scenarios that we could potentially see in 2011….
#1 U.S. debt could become a massive crisis at any moment. China is saying all of the right things at the moment, but many analysts are openly worried about what could happen if China suddenly decides to start dumping all of the U.S. debt that they have accumulated. Right now about the only thing keeping U.S. government finances going is the ability to borrow gigantic amounts of money at extremely low interest rates. If anything upsets that paradigm, it could potentially have enormous consequences for the entire world financial system.
#2 Speaking of threats to the global financial system, it turns out that "quantitative easing 2" has had the exact opposite effect that Ben Bernanke planned for it to have. Bernanke insisted that the main goal of QE2 was to lower interest rates, but instead all it has done is…
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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
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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