Talbots Put Options in Fashion with Bearish Players
by Option Review - January 4th, 2011 4:57 pm
Today’s tickers: TLB, PFCB, VZ, NDAQ, MTL & HSNI
TLB - Talbots, Inc. – Bearish traders donning Talbots put options this afternoon appear to be positioning for shares of the women’s apparel, shoes and accessories manufacturer to continue falling in the next couple of months. The clothing maker’s shares are down 5.05% in the final minutes of the trading day to stand at $8.08. TLB was cut to ‘hold’ from ‘buy’ with a $10.00 share price target at Jefferies on Monday. Talbots’ February $7.0 strike put options are the most active today, with more than 6,000 contracts having changed hands at that strike ahead of the closing bell, versus previously existing open interest of 644 lots. Nearly all of the put options were purchased at that strike for an average premium of $0.19 each. Put buyers make money if TLB’s shares drop another 15.7% to trade below the average breakeven point at $6.81 by February expiration day. Longer-term bearish traders tried on May $7.0 strike put options for size, buying some 1,300 contracts for an average premium of $0.59 apiece. Talbots’ overall reading of options implied volatility ended the session 13.2% higher on the day at 52.01%.
PFCB - P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, Inc. – Put options are flying out of the kitchen at P.F. Chang’s this afternoon with shares of the Asian-inspired restaurant chain operator slipping 2.50% lower to $47.44 in the final 30 minutes of the session. Investor appetite for bearish put contracts follows reports out on Monday from the National Restaurant Association noting that, for the first time in three months, restaurant operators reported net declines in same-store sales and customer traffic levels in the month of November. Approximately 5,500 puts changed hands at the February $45 strike today versus paltry previously existing open interest of just 111 contracts at that strike. Volume in February $45 strike puts represents roughly 53% of the 10,415 lots of overall previously existing open interest on the restaurant operator. It looks like investors satisfied bearish outlook on…
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DiggOptions Player Puts the Strangle-Hold on Cablevision Systems Corp.
by Option Review - December 16th, 2010 4:33 pm
Today’s tickers: CVC, OSTK, AKS, SLB, MON, NDAQ & WGO
CVC - Cablevision Systems Corp. – A short strangle implemented on the cable operator during afternoon trading indicates one strategist expects shares in Cablevision Systems Corp. to remain range-bound through June 2011 expiration. Cablevision’s shares rose earlier in the day, but are down 0.35% to arrive at $34.57 as of 3:40pm in New York. It appears the strangle-player sold 20,000 calls at the June 2011 $38 strike at a premium of $1.25 each, and sold the same number of puts at the lower June 2011 $29 strike for a premium of $0.85 apiece. Gross premium pocketed by the investor amounts to $2.10 per contract. The trader keeps the full amount of premium received on the transaction as long as shares in CVC trade within the confines of the strike prices described through expiration day next year. Short stances taken in both call and put options expose the trader to losses in the event that CVC’s shares soar 16.0% higher to trade above the upper breakeven point at $40.10, or should shares plunge 22.2% lower to breach the lower breakeven price of $26.90 ahead of June expiration.
OSTK - Overstock.com, Inc. – The online retailer’s shares are up more than 4.4% in the final minutes of the trading session to stand at $17.22. Overstock.com made its way onto our scanners late in the trading day due to bullish activity in the front month. Investors expecting shares to continue to rally ahead of expiration day tomorrow purchased more than 1,500 calls at the December $17.5 strike for an average premium of $0.23 each. Call buyers profit if OSTK’s shares rally another 3.0% to surpass the average breakeven price of $17.73 by expiration. Options implied volatility on Overstock.com is up 12.5% at 54.96% as of 3:45pm.…
Dollar Bull Throws in the Towel Following Employment Report
by Option Review - December 3rd, 2010 4:12 pm
Today’s tickers: UUP, FTI, ZRAN & NDAQ
UUP - PowerShares DB US Dollar Bullish Fund – A sea change in attitude toward the dollar following today’s weaker-than-expected employment report inspired one options player to cut and run from a large bullish position in the US Dollar Bullish Fund this morning. Shares of the UUP, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the performance of the dollar index, are down 1.00% to arrive at 22.93 just before 11:30 am. It looks like the trader originally purchased a massive position in March 2011 24 strike calls to gain exposure to a rising dollar, or alternatively to defend against dollar appreciation, ahead of the Fed’s decision to roll out a second round of quantitative easing. The investor appears to have purchased 105,500 calls at the March 2011 24 strike back on October 27, 2010, at a premium of $0.34 apiece. Since the calls were purchased, the fund rose approximately 3.8% from 22.65 up to this week’s high of 23.52. In hindsight, the trader would have been better advised to act ahead of Friday’s employment data release as he did when he initially purchased the calls ahead of the Fed announcement. Premium on the March 2011 24 strike calls stood at an average of $0.48 each on Tuesday when the UUP touched its intraweek high of 23.52. The plunge in the value of the dollar today combined with the adverse effects of eroding time value on the contracts pushed premium on the calls down significantly. The investor received just $0.24 per call option on the sale of all 105,500 contracts today. Net losses on the closing sale amount to $0.10 each. We do not know whether the options were tied to an underlying position or if the initial long call position was intended as a hedge against a strengthening dollar. These are important factors that would likely change the interpretation of the activity observed on the UUP this morning.…
Which Way Wednesday – Top of the Charts Edition
by Phil - October 13th, 2010 4:20 am
Is it time to throw fundamentals out the window?
As we went through the Sept 21st Fed minutes in yesterday’s Member chat we read some things that were AWFUL about the economy. I went through my usual exercise of parsing out the minutes and making comments for Members and it’s been a long time since I had to use red highlights that often! Still the market rallied, ostensibly on the premise that the economy is SO BAD, that the Fed will have no choice but to flood the economy with newly printed Dollars so that a rising tide of currency will lift all asset ships.
The boy from Zimbabwe on the right is a multi-Trillionaire and those Trillions should be just enough to buy him a loaf of bread if he hurries to the store before they change the prices this morning. This is what is happening to our own economy, only on a smaller scale (so far). Our government, like Zimbabwe, has gotten into so much debt that they can never hope to repay it but new bills keep coming in every day so – What is a government to do?
Why print more money of course!
Now, when a bill comes in, they just crank up the presses and drop the fresh bills in an envelope. Unfortunately, after a while, the people who provide goods and services you and your government pay for begin to catch on that those bills are suddenly very easy to come by and they begin to demand more and more of them as exchange. It’s a little hard to picture unless you run it into the abstract but think of it like an auction, where 5 people have $5 each to bid on 5 items. Well those items (commodities) will get somewhere between $0 and $5 from the bidders, right? Now, what happens if one of the bidders prints himself up $45 additional dollars? Now he can bid $10 on each item and the other bidders will get nothing.
That’s what the top 1% are doing with commodities and other assets right now. The assets are the same assets they were last year and the year before that. There has been very little variation between supply and demand and demand has probably gone down a bit during the recession but that doesn’t matter as 1% of the people have MUCH…
Testy Tuesday – Fed Pop or Drop?
by Phil - September 21st, 2010 8:27 am
Isn’t this exciting?
We popped all of our 5% levels yesterday, now all we have to do is hold them and we can start looking ahead to the 10% lines. Just 10 days ago, on Friday the 10th, we did our last multi-chart study and I said in the morning post: "I am not TA guy but If I were a bear, I’d be pretty darned concerned about the charts as it looks to me like the 20-day moving averages are registering a short-term mistake in a generally rising trend." Look at how those 20 dma’s have snapped up in less than 2 weeks (blue lines are mid-points, green circles are 5% levels):
So Gold and Transports are running away with SOX falling behind. We’ve been playing the SOX up with USD, which is up 10% since I picked it in that Friday’s post but that’s been a relative underperformer for us as we nailed the bottom with a buying frenzy into the late August drop which culminated with my very bullish "September’s Dozen" from the 3rd. There were actually 10 stocks and only 9 fit in the multi-chart (I dropped HMY, who already gained 15%) with way more than a dozen trade ideas for our Members to take advantage of the anticipated short-term moves. Of the 10, only IRM has been laying around but we weren’t expecting a quick move on them and played a conservative April spread and took the risk on Oct $22.50 calls, which are our only loser, down 30% at .20 but I still like them if we break up from here.
The leverage you can gain with option plays is truly stunning. On BRCM, for example, the trade idea was a straight purchase of the Sept $32 calls for $1.25, BRCM topped out at $35.49 with the calls close to $3 on the 14th and they expired on Friday at $2.16, which is up 72%, even for people who didn’t stop out between there and up 140% that Tuesday. That trade was a combo trade with the sale of the October $30 puts at .70 and those are down to .30 (up 57%) which are well on their way to expiring worthless for a full 100% gain. We also took an artificial buy/write that stretched from Jan to Jan 2012 so that was 3 trade ideas on one stock – you can see how quickly we get past a dozen!
We get aggressive at the inflection points – had we…
How to Make Profits in Your Spare Time
by Phil - February 7th, 2010 8:26 am
Option Sage submits:
I saw an infomercial from Fisher Investments where Ken Fisher mentioned 3 attributes that he believes are keys to successful investing which can be crudely summarized as follows:
[1] Focus on long-term investing
[2] Expect surprises
[3] Stay ahead of the crowd by knowing what others don’t
The first point is certainly critical and weeds out the greedy ‘get-rich-quick’ traders from the patient traders. Our policy here is that of ‘play-to-win’. We like to be aggressive in seeking profits with short-term plays but we also recognize that if those trades don’t work out that we can still rely on longer term plays to end up profitable in the end.
The second point regarding expecting surprises asks the trader the question “Are you managing risk well and do you have contingency plans in mind each time you enter a trade?” While the second part of the sentence is important, the first is paramount! No matter what you do, never violate risk management rules which we have discussed here in the past.
The third point is a luxury in my view. Of course, it would be nice to know what others don’t but it’s not critical. By definition only a small number can have information that the rest of the crowd does not have so if you are not trading full-time you have to find another way of making money without relying on staying ahead of the crowd.
As I was scanning for trades over the weekend, I came across one trade which might in fact fall into the category of offering relatively attractive profits by relying on options rather than additional information. In fact, I know many of our members find it hard to focus on the daily trades and would like to construct virtual portfolios with the longer-term in mind. As Phil mentioned in his classic "James Bond Investing" article, playing short-term positions requires constant vigilance and you need to ready to turn on a dime with small windows of opportunity and this kind of trading is not for everyone. Even Phil has a rule of thumb that 75% of a virtual…
Investor Initiates Volatility Play on Alcoa Ahead of Earnings
by Option Review - January 11th, 2010 4:13 pm
Today’s tickers: AA, GLD, MGM, NXY, INTC, NDAQ, ANDS, F, EEM, MMR & MELI
AA – Alcoa, Inc. – A short straddle play on the largest U.S. producer of aluminum today implies one investor anticipates Alcoa’s shares will remain range-bound through January’s expiration on Friday. Alcoa’s shares appreciated 1% to a new 52-week high of $17.20 (as of 12:40 pm EDT) during the session. According to one Bloomberg article, the firm may report fourth-quarter profits of $0.06 per share today. The sold straddle strategy also indicates the trader expects lower volatility in the price per share. Perhaps this individual is taking advantage of the typical drop in option implied volatility, which tends to accompany earnings announcements. The investor sold 10,000 calls at the January $17.50 strike for a premium of $0.59 apiece, and sold 10,000 puts at the same strike for about $0.69 each. The gross premium pocketed on the trade amounts to $1.28 per contract. The full $1.28 premium is safe in the investor’s wallet if the contracts expire worthless at a share price of $17.50 on Friday. The short call and put positions established today leave the investor vulnerable to potential losses in the event that Alcoa’s shares swing outside of the breakeven boundaries. Losses accrue if shares edge beneath the lower breakeven price of $16.22, or if shares rise above the upper breakeven point at $18.78.
GLD – SPDR Gold Trust ETF – Shares of the exchange-traded fund, which mirrors the price of gold bullion, may be up more than 1.25% to $112.82 today, but option traders populated various contracts with bearish strategies. A hefty put spread appeared in the June contract. The transaction involved the purchase of 17,000 puts at the June $105 strike for a premium of $3.50 each, marked against the sale of 17,000 puts at the lower June $95 strike for roughly $0.52 apiece. The net cost of the pessimistic play amounts to $2.98 per contract. If the investor is holding a long position in GLD shares, the spread provides downside protection in case shares slip beneath the breakeven price of $102.02, by expiration in June. Additional bearish indications appeared in the September contract. One trader initiated a risk reversal by selling 5,000 calls at the September $130 strike for $4.55 each, spread against the purchase of 5,000 puts at the lower September $100 strike for $3.60 apiece. GLD’s shares must trade beneath…
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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...
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