Monday – Merger Mania Continues
by Phil - August 30th, 2010 8:22 am
It’s another busy Monday for M&A activity.
SNY announced a $18.5Bn CASH offer for GENZ ($69/share), INTC buy’s INNNY’s wireless unit for $1.4Bn in CASH and DELL and HPQ are still in a bidding war over PAR (and HPQ thinks their own shares are so cheap they are buying back $10Bn worth of them). The biggest winner in this weekend’s acquisition game is – ME! I live in northern NJ and, with the merger of CAL and UAUA going through, Continental is forced to diffuse some of their concentration at Newark airport and that ends up giving LUV 18 slots, bringing some much-needed additional competition to Newark, which has been pretty much dominated by Continental for years. LUV is a great buy at $11.13 and a fun way to play is the Jan $10/11 bull call spread at .60, selling the Jan $10 puts for .55, which is net .05 on the $1 spread with a 1,900% upside and your worst-case scenario is you own LUV at net $10.05 – what’s not to LUV?
Speaking of diffused concentration, the Glenn Beck rally was a bit of a disappointment with just 87,000 people showing up (Fox had a permit for 300,000 and keeps using that number as if that’s how many came while Beck himself has been claiming between 300,000 and 650,000 were there and Michele Backmann (R-Minn) claims it was the biggest rally ever held in Washington, with no fewer than 1M people in attendance). This has now backfired on Beck, Palin and the Tea Party as a "show of strength" becomes a show of apathy (to the people who can count, anyway) - it probably would have been smarter to hold the rally next weekend but Fox wanted to time the rally for the start of Jon Stewart’s vacation, although it didn’t stop him from commenting in absentia (where I hear Jon has a lovely bungalow). For a more "fair and balanced" view of the rally, see the very nice coverage from Reason TV.
During an interview on "Fox News Sunday," which was filmed after Saturday’s rally, Beck claimed that Obama "is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor-and-victim – People aren’t recognizing his version of Christianity," Beck added. Beck’s attacks represent a continuing attempt to characterize Obama as a radical, an approach that has prompted anxiety among some Republicans,…
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DiggStrangle Strategist Targets MSG Ahead of LeBron James’ Decision
by Option Review - July 7th, 2010 4:11 pm
Today’s tickers: MSG, MOS, LUV, ILMN, GHDX, FCN, KBH, LCC & CSX
MSG – Madison Square Garden, Inc. – Speculation as to which team will acquire the larger-than-life LeBron James continues to mount ahead of the basketball superstar’s Thursday night announcement on ESPN. One options investor put uncertainty in the marketplace to good use by purchasing a strangle on Madison Square Garden, Inc., the fully-integrated sport, entertainment and media business, which, among other things, owns and operates sports franchises including the New York Knicks. MSG’s shares are currently up 1.5% to $20.58 as of 2:50 pm (ET), but earlier surged 5.4% to an intraday high of $21.36. MSG edged onto our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after the trader purchased a long strangle in the July contract. The investor appears to be positioning for a dramatic shift in the price of the underlying shares ahead of July expiration. The options strategist purchased a 2,000-lot strangle, buying 2,000 calls at the July $22.5 strike for a premium of $0.60 apiece, and buying 2,000 puts at the lower July $20 strike for a premium of $0.50 each. The net cost of the transaction amount to $1.10 per contract and prepares the strangle-player to benefit nicely as long as MSG’s shares take off running in either direction. Profits are available to the investor if shares rally straight through the current 52-week high on the stock of $22.95 to trade above the effective upper breakeven price of $23.60. If LeBron James were to join the NY Knicks it has been said the value of the MSG franchise will increase significantly. The strangler will certainly benefit if the Knickerbockers turn out to be James’ new teammates because MSG shares are likely to soar. Conversely, the options strategist is poised to profit to the downside should shares trade below the lower breakeven price of $18.90 ahead of expiration day. Perhaps the investor is expecting shares of the underlying stock to suffer if LeBron ends up with a different team. Either way, the investor responsible for the strangle strategy is positioned to benefit from a wayward shift in the price of the underlying stock. But, the trader will lose the full premium paid, $1.10 per contract in this case, if shares trade within the confines of the strike prices described at expiration. Finally, the investor may profit if implied volatility on MSG, which is currently up…
Fall Down Friday – Stop the Week, We Want To Get Off!
by Phil - January 22nd, 2010 8:25 am
Boy, when sentiment shifts – it REALLY shifts!
Suddenly nothing is good enough for this market. A beat from GOOG send the stock plummeting, massive earnings at GS sent the stock lower even before Obama read them the riot act (now called the "Volker Rule"). On the one hand, it’s all an overreaction but, on the very large other hand, it’s about freakin’ time this market finally acted normally and pulled back a little because 10,700 was pretty irrational given the underlying fundamentals.
On the whole, we’re loving it as we went to cash last week and played bearish into the drop. Last week I detailed how we had a great time day-trading in both directions and this week we hit it again with our upside DIA play on Wednesday (a 26% winner on the day) and yesterday I sent out a morning Alert to Members at 9:50 saying: "I am for shorting into this morning spike as it’s nonsense, especially this run in the Nas – most likely it will reverse but I’d like to see a clear move back to resistance first. QQQQ $45 puts give you great leverage at .56 and you can use $46.20 on the Qs as a stop out, looking for .70+ on the day." We hit .85 by lunch and pulled it just off the day’s high for a nice 51% gain on the day.
I point this out both to encourage you to subscribe to our Newsletter (all 19,000 subscribers got yesterday’s free Alert) as well as to emphasize that WE DO NOT CARE which way the market goes. Yes, I am very bearish on the short-term economy as I feel we are overbought and due for a correction but I also think we are probably OK over the longer term and we are taking advantage of these dips to pick up some long positions. We are opportunistic players and we are investing along the premise I laid out in my 2010 outlook, which was titled "A Tale of Two Economies" as we see a great divide forming between the top 10% and the companies that service them and the bottom 90% of our population who are in dire straights, as are the companies that rely on selling to the masses to make a living.
For an example of "Rich Company/Poor Company" just look at the earnings of two ends of…
Oxen Pick (SHORT SELL): LUV
by David Ristau - July 17th, 2009 3:40 am
Courtesy of David at The Oxen Group
Oxen Pick (SHORT SELL): LUV
The Oxen Group is looking for a short sell on Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) tomorrow. The market may move green or red, and it really comes down to Bank of America, Citigroup, and GE. Those three giants release earnings tomorrow. If all three are splendid, the market will really take off, even Southwest Airlines.
The issue for Southwest is that even if that does occur, this stock is going to come down. In after hours today, Moody’s Investor Ratings commented that they were putting LUV on a possible credit downgrade due to the weak demand and market for airfare. The airline industry has been struggling, but Southwest Airlines always seems to be a step in front of the competition. This news of a likely downgrade spells bad news for Southwest, especially because the stock has really no upside right now.
What will Southwest do? If the market is looking to trend down after the earnings reports, LUV will drop right away and continue to trend down on a red day. If, however, the market jumps out of the gate and looks bullish, LUV will most likely have some type of small gains into the day, but it will not be able to sustain those gains and move backwards. Further, one has to wonder even if the earnings are positive, how much more this market has to go with four straight days in the green and a lot of quickly overvalued stocks. Additionally, if CIT goes bankrupt it could add more fuel to a downward market. LUV technically is, outside of its upper bollinger band, way overbought. So, its technicals all point towards downward movement.
Entry: Recommend selling 15-30 minutes into session if earnings are good, right away if bad.
Exit: We recommend exiting after a 2-4% increase.
Stop Loss: We recommend a 3% stop loss on all entry in prices
Upper Resistance: 6.60 (lower)
Oxen Rating*: 5
Thursday Morning
by Phil - April 16th, 2009 8:23 am
Is today the day we break the pattern?
I predicted a wild week on Monday morning and we have been having a fabulous time as it only took me until 12:51 on Monday afternoon to point out to members that we were following a virtually identical pattern to the previous week. That enabled us to anticipate the gap down on Tuesday morning, as well as yesterday’s stick save. In fact, I predicted the Dow would close at 8,050 and missed it by 7 points. Our short plays that day were MA (which we cashed in yesterday with a huge gain), BIDU and FSLR. The last two are still trading up and I really like BIDU as a proxy for a possible disappointment from GOOG this evening. Also, we got a downward revision to China’s GDP today to "just" 6.1% growth.
I often say to members "We don’t care if the markets are fixed, as long as we know HOW they are fixed" and yesterday was a great example of that as we digested the Beige Book report and, at 2:53, with the S&P spiking down to 839, I was able to post a reminder "20 minutes until stick save" and put up a trade idea for the FAS $6 calls at $2.15 (because they had almost no premium), which closed out at $2.90 an hour later (up 34%).
We did not, however, change our overall cover stance at the close of 55% bearish. I would have been more bullish if we had NOT moved past 848 on the S&P, there was a sort of frenzied overkill to the "rally" that made me think we would not get the follow-through that we got last Thursday. Also, we had to take into consideration that last Thursday closed the week so we have an extra day (and it’s options expiration day!) to play with so, as I said to members in yesterday’s chat, it pays to error on the side of caution – just in case.
Today we have the usual 650,000 people losing their jobs (yawn) along with anemic Building Permits and Housing Starts (550K each expected) and the Philly Fed at 10 am. The Philly Fed is our biggest worry as it is almost certain to be worse than the -32 expected because it says right in yesterday’s Beige Book: "Third District manufacturers reported further declines in shipments and new orders, on balance, from…
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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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