Guest View
User: Pass: | become a member
Posts Tagged ‘INTC’

Bearish Spreads In Intel Options As Shares Extend Pull Back

www.interactivebrokers.com

Today’s tickers: INTC, SKUL, CAM & PAAS

INTC - Intel Corp. – Shares in the world’s largest chipmaker extended losses today, falling 2.25% to $23.46 in the first half of the session, following Intel’s announcement on Monday that fourth-quarter revenue would be lower than previously estimated due to shortages in hard disk drives. A sizable bearish put spread initiated in the July 2012 contract this morning may be one investor’s strategy to benefit from possible sharp share price erosion over the next seven months. It looks like the trader purchased a roughly 10,000-lot July 2012 $23/$17 put spread for a net premium of $1.60 per contract. The investor responsible for the transaction may profit at expiration in the event that Intel’s shares drop 8.8% to trade below the effective breakeven point on the spread at $21.40. Maximum potential profits of $4.40 per contract are available on the trade should the chipmaker’s shares plummet 27.5% to settle below $17.00 at expiration day next year. Shares in INTC last traded below $17.00 back in July 2009. The company is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings on January 19, 2012.

SKUL - Skullcandy, Inc. – Bearish activity in Skullcandy options suggests traders are positioning for shares in the maker of headphones and other fashionable electronics accessories to pull back ahead of expiration next month. Shares in the Park City, Utah-based company earlier fell 5.5% to $11.79, the lowest traded price since Skullcandy had its IPO back in July. Investors bracing for SKUL’s shares to continue to hit fresh lows in the next five weeks snapped up more than 730 in-the-money puts at the Jan. 2012 $12.5 strike for an average premium of $1.47 apiece. Put buyers at this strike stand prepared to profit in the event that shares in the headphones maker drop 6.4% from today’s low of $11.79…
continue reading


Tags: , , ,



Intel Bulls Eye Fresh Highs In Chip Maker’s Shares Come Springtime

www.interactivebrokers.com

Today’s tickers: INTC, S & ACN

INTC - Intel Corp. – A spate of buying activity in Intel Corp. call options this morning suggests some options strategists are positioning for substantial bullish movement in the price of the underlying over the next four to five months. Shares in Intel are certainly heading higher today, with the stock currently up 5.5% to stand at $24.86 as of 12:10 PM in New York. Fresh prints in March 2012 contract calls indicate investors may profit if Intel’s shares rally to their highest level in at least five years. Traders taking a bullish stance on the chip maker picked up more than 4,200 calls at the Mar. 2012 $28 strike for an average premium of $0.43 each. Like-minded optimists paid an average premium of $0.28 per contract to purchase roughly 9,100 calls at the higher Mar. 2012 $29 strike, as well. Investors long the call options may profit at March expiration in the event that Intel’s shares surge 14.4% and 17.8% to surpass the average breakeven prices of $28.43 and $29.28, respectively. Looking out to options expiring in April 2012, it appears some 8,800 calls changed hands at the $29 strike against open interest of 2,037 contracts. Investors purchased most of these contracts for an average premium of $0.45 a-pop. Finally, short-term bulls are dabbling in Intel Corp. weekly calls. It looks like investors that got in ahead of the week’s rally are taking profits off the table today. Open interest patterns in the Dec. ’02 $24 strike suggest traders purchased around 3,500 of the calls for an average premium of $0.10 each one day prior to Thanksgiving. This morning these calls were sold roughly 3,500 times for an average premium of $0.64 each, or approximate one-week gains of 540%.

S - Sprint Nextel Corp. – Shares in the wireless carrier joined in on the broad market rally today, rising 3.6% to $2.59 in early-afternoon trade. However, a large transaction in weekly puts on the stock indicates one strategist is prepared should the music stop. It looks like the investor purchased around 27,000 puts at the Dec. ’02 $2.5 strike for a premium of $0.07 apiece. The trader may profit at expiration this week if shares in Sprint Nextel Corp. drop 6.2% from the current price of $2.59 to breach the effective breakeven point at $2.43. Immediate-term bearish options activity in the weekly puts contrasts with a much…
continue reading


Tags: , ,



Strategists Take To Goldman Weekly Call And Put Options

www.interactivebrokers.com

Today’s tickers: GS, SNE, INTC & GNW

GS - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. – Shares in Goldman Sachs staged an intra-session comeback after opening lower on Tuesday. The stock is currently up 1.5% at $97.56 after earlier rising to $98.81, the highest since September 29. Call buyers tackling weekly options on Goldman may profit if the stock extends gains through expiration on Friday. A combined 7,000 calls changed hands at the Oct. ’14 $100 and $105 strikes, topping open interest levels in each case. Buyers are more active than sellers thus far in the session, with traders paying an average premium of $1.17 and $0.29 per contract for the $100 and $105 strike contracts, respectively. Bulls are not alone in populating short-term contracts, however, as demand for weekly puts is growing, as well. The Oct. ’14 $95 strike put is most active, with volume exceeding 3,200 lots against open interest of 808 contracts in early-afternoon trade. Put buyers shelled out an average premium of $1.90 per contract. Investors long the put options profit at expiration if shares in GS drop 4.6% to breach the average breakeven point on the downside at $93.10. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reports earnings on Thursday ahead of the opening bell. Shares in GS may respond in kind to JPM’s report, either to the upside or the downside, as investors search for signals ahead of the banking institution’s own earnings announcement one week from today. Options traders have exchanged more than 50,000 contracts on the stock as of 12:50 pm in New York.

SNE - Sony Corp. – A burst of fresh call activity on Sony Corp today suggests at least one options strategist is positioning for the price of the consumer electronics maker’s shares to rebound during the next several months. Shares in Sony rose 3.25%…
continue reading


Tags: , , ,



F’ing Thursday – Give Us a Break!

Holy cow – when will it end?  

As I mentioned yesterday, we were expecting a whipsaw after the morning sell-off and we played that perfectly with bullish trades on the DIA and OIH and, as we move up, we took bearish plays on GLL, TZA and QQQ.  All good so far but then we did a little bottom fishing before wising up and shorting USO into the close – just in case.  The futures were up 2% this morning at 5am and I had to warn our Members:  

Overall, this is too weak to get us over the hump and we are going to have to lean a little more bearish unless we can follow Europe up 2.5% or more.  Our charts will turn from "spiking low on volume" to "consolidating for a move below 20%" very quickly if we don’t gets something bullish going by tomorrow.  

The Dollar was at 74.64 at the time and it’s only 75.04 now (7:50) but the futures have gone from up 2% to down 1% in less than 3 hours – that is insane!  How are retail investors supposed to play this market?  The average person does not have the stomach for watching their virtual portfolio’s value go up and down 5% a day – at some point they are all going to pull the plug and walk away.  Of course, as I was saying yesterday – that’s just what the Banksters want you to do, assuming they know QE3 is right around the corner, accompanied by a 20%+ market rally into the year’s end.  

Anyway, hope is NOT a strategy for the prudent investor so I published another set of Disaster Hedges this morning as it’s time to add a layer to our longer hedges (which are now deeply in the money).  I hate to chase these plays but one thing we learned in 2008 is that there may never be a bottom (not in the short run) no matter how oversold you think things may be.  Was the market wrong in 2008 to go below S&P 1,000?  Well 3 years of subsequent trading seem to indicate that it was – but that did not stop us from dropping 33% lower, to 666 (the mark of the Blankfein!).   

Our entire goal in a sell-off like this is to simply preserve our cash.  The lower we…
continue reading


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



Make Billion$ With StockTwits (and Win a Free Quarter!)

Billions!  

That’s right, if you followed Philstockworld on Stocktwits this past month and followed our trade ideas, you could have made Billions of Dollars.  Not bad but that’s only a tiny portion of what you get at PSW every day.  Needless to say, we’ve had a good month but it’s no fun being right if nobody knows it so let’s review a month of Tweets and also make it worth your while to send others to Our StockTwits Link and follow us there.  

For the month of July, every new follower will be entered in a random drawing and one will be selected to win a free 1-year subscription to the PSW Report – our twice-daily Email that gives you access to all of our non-Premium posts as well as Stock World Weekly.  If you are already a paying PSW subscriber and win this drawing, we will give you a 3-month extension of your Current Membership Level instead added to your current subscription.  

If you are a Member and your friends subscribe and tweet us your name – one of those named members will also be the winner of a 3-month extension of that member’s current level.  The more friends you have, the better the chances to win!  

We’re doing this because we need to build up our social networking presence so I’ve been tweeting more in June.  You can go to our StockTwits site and see all 45 Tweets posted since June 1st (there are many also before that) but I’m just going to review the ones that were less generic (we auto-tweet my posts) to give you an idea of what kind of value your friends can get out of this free service:

 Phil Davis 


continue reading


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



Stock World Weekly: Fireworks! Our 12 Dow Plays Make $6,720 in 2 Weeks!

$6,720!

Not bad for our little newsletter…  On June 19th, we published this list of 12 bullish trade ideas on the Dow in the weekend edition of Stock World Weekly that are already up $6,720 in just two weeks!  How’s that for value?  

The July $119/116 bear put spread was still at .90 on Monday, well after we flipped bullish (the "Bernanke Bottom" was called by Phil on Thursday Morning, June 22nd and reported in last week’s SWW) so a nickel loss on that side (5% or $50 on 10 contracts), which was well offset by the following gains:  

  • AA July $15 puts sold for $0.63, now $0.09 - up $540 (85%)
  • BAC 2013 $7.50 puts sold for $0.60, now $0.61 – down $10 (1.6%)
  • CSCO Jan $14 puts sold for $0.92, now $0.60 - up $320 (34%)
  • DIS July $37 puts sold for $0.55, now $0.06 – up $490 (89%)
  • GE 2013 $15 puts sold for $1.40, now $1.16 – up $240 (17%)
  • HD Aug $32 puts sold for $0.82, now $0.17 – up $650 (79%)
  • HPQ Jan $31 puts sold for $1.60, now $0.93 – up $670 (41%)
  • INTC Jan 2013 $20 puts sold for $2.71, now $2.24 – up $470 (17%)
  • MMM July $87.50 puts sold for $0.71, now $0.07 - up $640 (90%)
  • MSFT 2013 $22.50 puts sold for $2.75, Now $1.94 - up $810 (29%)
  • VZ 2013 $35 puts sold for $5.10, now $3.82 – up $1,280 (25%)
  • WMT Jan $50 puts sold for $2.05, now $1.43 – up $620 (30%

That’s a total profit of $6,720 on these 12 positions in just two weeks.  As our daily readers know, Phil called for cash on Friday so short-term bullish plays like these were taken off the table as we flirt with potential disaster next week. 

If, however, the weekend goes smoothly and the markets maintain their bullish bent – we have all this lovely cash to deploy next week (and there are two brand new bullish trade ideas in this weekend’s edition of Stock World Weekly) and that BAC play still hasn’t made it’s money yet while GE is up "just" 17% so far – so both of those trade ideas are still ripe for new entries but, as Phil likes to say:  

"Never worry about getting back to cash – I’m sure we’ll find something to trade tomorrow."

Click here for the latest Stock World Weekly: Fireworks

We hope you and your family have a very happy holiday weekend.

All the best, 

Ilene & Elliot 


continue reading


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,



Testy Tuesday – Dow 12,000 or Dow 11,500?

Are we "still too heavy"?

That was what I said about valuations back on May 4th, when we set new watch levels.  $96 was our goal on oil, we hit that and went long yesterday.  Of course, in our upside-down Wonderland Market, falling oil prices are somehow BAD for the Transports and we thought we accounted for that with our 2,448 target but they failed that last week and fell another 125 (5%) since then.  Similarly (easier to write than say), the Nasdaq blew through our 2,700 line and bottomed out at 2,639 yesterday (-2.25%) but the Russell has been the biggest surprise, leading us all the way down to 773 in yesterday’s action before bouncing back to lucky 777.

As we expected yesterday, the Dollar was sacrificed on the altar of keeping the markets from going to Hell in a handbasket – dropping all the way from 75.20 to 74.80 (0.5%) which gave us only a flat market but the 74.60 line held in overnight and we’re back to 74.80 and now the pre-markets are wondering why they gained 0.75% in overnight trading.  Oil popped all the way back to $97.80 before failing spectacularly back to $96.50 but we have stayed on the sidelines so far, waiting to see if we can establish a new (hopefully lower) range to trade in. 

We did take a poke at higher oil prices with the USO July $39 calls at $1.10 and they finished the day right at $1.10 so very dull so far but we figured oil might be good for a pop into Wednesday’s inventories.  We also shed most of our bearish bets on yesterday’s dip and flipped fairly bullish but we haven’t done a lot of bottom fishing yet as our main plan is to use a fake market rally to cash out the longs we have left and flip short into the holiday weekend.  As the moment though, I have noticed that the Dow has been holding up much better than it’s peers and we have that lovely 12,000 line to use as a stop so let’s construct a short hedge that pays big bucks below 12,000:  

Notice how the Dow is holding up better than the other indices.  Part of that is a flight to safety as several Dow components are considered "safety stocks" like KFT, MCD, JNJ…  But, in the long haul, they all fall down eventually so we…
continue reading


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,



Wild Weekly Wrap-Up (Part 1) – Our Billion Dollar Oil Shorts!

Billions!  

That’s how much money our oil futures trade ideas generated over the past two weeks and I certainly hope everyone got a piece of theirs but, out of curiosity, how did our other trade ideas do in this terrible market?  We track our virtual portfolios but we have many trade ideas during members chat on both sides of the fence so let’s take some time to review what worked and what didn’t work as the Dow dropped 500 points since the holiday.  

Keep in mind this is just virtual performance and I’ll do my best to not miss anything and I’m going to include the Friday before the holiday weekend so we can review what our mind-set was as we set ourselves up for the long weekend as well as how we handled the moves since in both our daily posts and our Member Chat.  I’m not going to narrate each day, that’s what Stock World Weekly is for –  I’ll just make quick comments on the trades when appropriate.  Keep in mind, with all options trading, once you make a quick 20%, you should be looking for the exits (see our Strategy Section) by setting stops (and we also stop out with a 20% loss of course) – we are just lucky when we happen to do better.  

TGIF – Dollar Done Diving or Destined to Drop?  

In the main post (main post trade ideas can be read daily by Report Members or higher – the rest are in our Private Member Chat), I discussed shorting oil futures off our $101.90 (at the time) target.  We didn’t like waiting for $102 because sometimes it failed.  Oil finished at $99 this week but was as low as $97.24 as we put pressure on the NYMEX pump crew by accepting their bogus offers to buy oil over $101 per barrel.  This post was the first one where I decided to go public with what we were doing, hoping to break the back of the market manipulators at the NYMEX by letting as many people as possible in on the trade.  This is also where I laid out our bearish fundamental case for oil so good for review.  My comment in the morning post was:  

As I mentioned yesterday, this week’s action is 


continue reading


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



 

Zero Hedge

The Cost Of The Combined Greek Bailout Just Rose To €320 Billion In Secured Debt, Or 136% Of Greek GDP

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

Some of our German readers may be laboring under the impression that following the €110 billion first Greek bailout agreed upon and executed in May 2010, the second Greek bailout would cost a "mere" €130 billion. Alas we have new for you - as of this morning, the formal cost of rescuing Greece for the adjusted adjusted adjusted second time has just risen to €145 billion, €175 billion, a whopping €210 billion, bringing the total explicit cost of all Greek bailout funds to date (and many more in sto...



more from Tyler

Chart School

Best Stock Market Indicator Ever: Weekend Update

Courtesy of Doug Short.

The $OEXA200R (the percentage of S&P 100 stocks above their 200 DMA) is a technical indicator available on StockCharts.com that can be used to forecast conservative entry and exit points for the stock market.

The OEXA is used to find the "sweet spot" time period in the market when you have the best chance of making money. See Is This the Best Stock Market Indicator Ever? for a discussion of this technical tool.

The chart below is current through the February 3rd close.


After a major S&P correction, the conditions for safe re-entry into the market are when:

   a) $OEXA200R rises above 65%. And two of the following three...

more from Chart School

Phil's Favorites

Violent Protests in Greece; 6 Cabinet Members Resign

Violent Protests in Greece; 6 Cabinet Members Resign; LAOS leader "I Would Rather Starve Than be Under German Jackboot"; Controversy Over Missing Paragraphs

Courtesy of Mish

Imagine you are asked to sign a document but three pages were missing. Further imagine the documents you were asked to sign were written in English but you only speak Greek. Would you sign?

That is exactly the predicament Greek officials were placed in by the Troika. Here is the story sent to me by Demetri Kofinas at Capital Account.

Hello Mish

George Karatzaferis leader of LOAS political party gave a speech today addressing why he refused to sign this latest agreement. In his speech, he said that he a...

more from Ilene

Sabrient

Sabrient Risers - 2/11/2012

Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisICABUYThe projected value for Empresas ICA is still rising quickly even though past earnings have already improved significantly.XBUYThe projected value for US Steel is still rising quickly even though past earnings have already improved significantly.FEICBUYProjected value continues to rise for FEI while long term increases in earnings growth are also becoming more widely expected.ASBCBUYMany analysts are expecting higher than previously expected long term growth from Associated Bancorp, and its near-term earnings outlook is also improving....

more from Sabrient

Insider Scoop

Benzinga's M&A Chatter for Friday February 10, 2012

Courtesy of Benzinga.

The following are the M&A deals, rumors and chatter circulating on Wall Street for Friday February 10, 2012:

Actuant Acquires Jeyco Pty

The Deal:
Actuant (NYSE: ATU) announced Friday that it has acquired Jeyco Pty Ltd (“Jeyco”). Headquartered near Perth, Australia, Jeyco designs and provides specialized mooring, rigging and towing systems and services to the offshore oil & gas industry in Australia and other international markets. Additionally, its highly engineered products are used in a variety of applications for other markets including cyclone mooring and marine, defense and mining tow systems. Jeyco generates annual revenues of approximately $20 million.

Actuant shares closed at $27.33 Friday, a loss of 0.18% on average volume.

...

http://www.insidercow.com/ more from Insider

Market Montage

And Still Not a Single 1% Down Day in 2012

Submitted by Mark Hanna

Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.

A little flurry of buying in the closing 5 minutes tacked on 2 S&P points and took the major indexes off the lows.  Only the Russell 2000 finished with a greater than 1% loss (1.4%) as it has been relatively weak versus the senior indexes for the past few sessions.   While today was the "worst day of the year" – it was quite a low bar as the previous biggest loss on the S&P 500 was -0.57%.

The S&P 500 held well above the 10 day moving average (didn't even really touch it) and did not even attempt to fill the gap from last Friday's employment report.  The teflon market rolls on for now.  Specul...



more from Mark

ETF Selector

ETFs Skid On Greece (VGK, EWG, FXE, DIA, SPY)

Courtesy of John Nyaradi.

Greece was “saved” for less than 24 hours but now major ETFs around the world skid into the weekend on Greek fears

After wangling for a week or more, Greek took their new deal to the European Ministers meeting, only to have it promptly rejected and so as we go into the weekend, major global markets and ETFs have again hit the skids on Greece.

After two years of wangling, the European zone is demanding yet more and deeper cuts for Greece to qualify for the next round of bailout loans that will keep the country from going bankrupt on March 20th.

Major European and United States ETF responded negatively to the new developments:

SPDR Dow Jones Industrial ETF (NYSEARCA:...



more from John

All About Trends

Mid-Day Update

Reminder: David is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Click here for the full report.




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...

more from David

Option Review

True Religion Falls Apart At The Seams After Earnings

 

Today’s tickers: TRLG, KR & IGT

...



more from Caitlin

OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of February 6th, 2012

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

Optrader 

...

more from OpTrader

Stock World Weekly

Stock World Weekly: The Relentless Pursuit of Meaningless Metrics

NEW: Elliott and Ilene are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.

Here's the latest Stock World Weekly, called "The Relentless Pursuit of Meaningless Metrics."  

...

more from SWW

IRA Strategy/Income Trader

Weekend Virtual Portfolio Update 1/30/2012

Here is a quick update of past trades and our current position. AA Money No trade this week as we wait for AA to settle. Phil remarked last week that AA seemed overvalued. In the meantime, it looks like we might have to roll our Feb 9 calls. Good thing we sold only 5 of them against our position. Last week P&L - 310.00 We lost ground last week, but we still have 11 months to sell premium! FAS Money Very good week for FAS Money as we benefited from the large amount of premium sold the previous week. We covered most of the shorts in advance of the Fed speech, but sold another set of options on Wednesday after the speech - 2 FAS calls that expired worthless on Friday, 2 FAS put that we are still holding and 2 FAZ put that we bought back for a profit on Friday. A late stick comparable to last week's almost gave us problems at the end of the day though! Last week P&L - $4277.00 IWM Money A decent week in this virtual portfo...

more from Strategies

Pharmboy

Biotech Investing for 2012

Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Finding new and exciting Biotech companies that target novel mechanisms is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  Sure there are many companies working on cutting edge science, but investing in those companies to reap the rewards of their work is a very dangerous game.  More often than not, companies fail because the mechanism does not pan out, the compound(s) do not have pharmacokinetics (get into the body or last very long in the body), or an adverse event happens that knocks years off a development timeline.  In addition, the stock can be manipulated by market makers so investors don't know which way is up.  I approach investing in biotechs as a long term prospect.  I continue to like our current portfolio of biotech companies (join in chat for many of those plays), and we continually add/subtract shares and sell/buy options on ...



more from Pharmboy



As Seen On:




About Phil:

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...

Learn more About Phil >>

About Ilene:

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.

Favorites Site >>