AMTD - TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. – Put options on TD Ameritrade are popular on the final trading session of the week, with shares in the financial services company trading 0.85% lower on the day at $18.76. Investors may be scooping up puts on the largest U.S. online trading firm following comments from the company’s chief executive regarding concerns that the slower pace of client trading activity in the context of a more uncertain economic climate may endure through the summer months. In-the-money put options in the August contract, which expire after TD Ameritrade reports third-quarter earnings on July 19, are drawing the most trading traffic today. It looks like investors purchased around 2,175 puts at the August $21 strike for an average premium of $2.77 each. Bears traded more than 3,400 puts at the lower August $20 strike on previously existing open interest of just 381 contracts. Roughly 3,000 of the lower-strike puts were picked up for an average premium of $1.82 a-pop. Investors long the August $20 strike puts make money in the event that AMTD’s shares fall another 3.1% to breach the average breakeven point on the downside at $18.18 by expiration day in August. Greater demand for TD Ameritrade put options helped raise the stock’s overall reading of options implied volatility 12.4% to 31.77% as of 1:00pm in New York.
XRT - SPDR S&P Retail ETF – A large ratio put spread initiated on the retail ETF suggests one big options strategist is positioning for substantial, albeit limited, bearish movement in the price of the underlying fund through July expiration. Shares in the XRT, an exchange-traded fund designed to mimic the performance of the S&P Retail Select Industry Index, dropped 2.4% to an intraday low of $49.15 today. The trader…
With the stock market setting new highs on a nearly daily basis, even as the real economy just slogs along, there seems to be one question on everyone’s mind: are we in the middle of yet another market bubble? For a growing chorus of money managers and market analysts, the answer is yes: the market is a house of cards, held up by easy money and investor delusion, and we are rushing all too blithely toward an inevitable crash. Given that we’ve recently lived through two huge asset bubbles, it&...
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” -- Herman Hesse
This is one obsessed Bull that is raging through Wall Street at the moment.
Not even last Thursday’s potentially destabilizing comments by a Fed official, who essentially said that the current round of bond purchases by the central bank could begin tapering off within the next few months, did much to give investors pause.
The market’s upbeat sentiment kept rolling right along, as yet more record highs were hit throughout the week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) added 1.6% for the week, while the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP) gained 1.8% over the course of the same time period. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Ind...
Need a quick GDP boost in a world in which the uber levered consumer is tapped out and has no more savings or purchasing power, in which the government is facing an existential socialism or bust crisis even as global sovereign debt levels are at unseens before levels, and in which global trade has collapsed (so there go the C, G and (X-M) components of GDP)?
No problem, just add some I for Inventory.
Better yet, add a whole lot of I, especially if you are that global growth dynamo, China, which over the years many have accused of having taken the term "overcapacity" and put it through the Barry Bonds juicer yet where courtesy of a central-planning regime that has made...
The Chicago Fed's National Activity Index, which I reported on earlier today, is based on 85 economic indicators drawn from four broad categories of data:
Production and Income
Employment, Unemployment and Hours
Personal Consumption and Housing
Sales, Orders, and Inventories
The complete list is available here in PDF format.
In today's Chicago Fed update, we learned that three of the four broad categories of indicators that make up the index decreased from February, and only one of the four categories made a positive contribution to the index in March (t...
Again, not much to add to this market in terms of analysis – nothing matters other than central banks. Last Wednesday/Thursday there were some 9 economic reports, 7 of which were disappointing or could be considered as such and all it got was one rare day down, and then new highs Friday. Markets are up 10 of the past 12 sessions and 17 of 21. Friday's move to 1666 was an exact 1000 point rally from March 2009's 666 bottom. Since this most recent leg of the move has been medium fast rather than a huge spike ala 1999, things are not necessarily overbought on the daily chart but we are seeing extremely rare action on the ...
Insiders may sell shares for any number of reasons, but conventional wisdom is that insiders really only buy shares of a company for one reason -- they believe the stock price will move higher and they want to profit from it.
Pullbacks and sell-offs provide a perfect opportunity for investors who have faith in a company to snap up shares. Here are some stocks that have seen insider buying recently.
ACADIA Pharmaceuticals
One director, Felix Baker, bought more than 1.9 million shares last week. That was worth more than $24.9 million. This San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company has been discussed as a possible takeover target and it last week announced a secondary offering...
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BMY - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Shares in drug maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., are ripping higher today, up 6.5% at $44.94, the highest level in more than a decade, ahead of the release of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2013 Annual Meeting abstracts tonight. The ASCO Annual Meeting begins on May 31st in Chicago. Options on BMY are far more active than usual today, with overall volume topping 64,000 contracts by 12:25 p.m. ET, versus average daily volume of around 11,400 c...
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By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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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
(
