Volatility Sellers Attack UltraShort S&P500 Calls
by Option Review - August 8th, 2011 4:07 pm
Today’s tickers: SDS, RIMM, KWK & XLB
SDS - ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 ETF – Roughly 50% of the S&P 500 Index rally from August 2010 through early-May has evaporated, with the market meltdown accelerating on the heels of the downgrade of U.S. debt. The VIX spiked to flash-crash levels today, and exceeded 40.95 earlier in the session as U.S. equities tumbled lower. However, barring a repeat of the flash crash or some other unforeseen piece of negative news, it looks like options strategists are positioning for investor fears to ease in the near term. Heavy out-of-the-money call selling on the SDS, an ETF corresponding to twice the inverse of the daily performance of the S&P 500 Index, was likely initiated by traders selling the spike in volatility. Shares in the SDS shot up 7.9% this afternoon to $26.52, the highest since November 2010. Volatility sellers targeted the August $30 strike most aggressively, selling some 45,000 contracts at that strike against paltry previously existing open interest of 1,651 contracts. Investors short the calls pocketed an average premium of $0.43 apiece, which they keep if shares in the SDS fail to rally above $30.00 at expiration. Traders have time on their side and may be able to buy back the calls, even if the S&P 500 Index continues to slide, at an advantageous price as long as volatility comes off in the next couple of weeks. Call selling spread to the August $31 strike, where nearly 10,200 contracts sold for an average premium of $0.32 each. Sellers dominated up at the August $32 and $33 strikes where some 2,600 and 6,100 calls sold for an average premium of $0.26 and $0.21, respectively. Volatility could come off should President Obama, one of the G7 leaders, the IMF, a central banker, or other government leader throw a few crumbs of optimism the market’s way this week to assuage investor fears. Meanwhile, closer-to-the-money call buying, on the other hand, indicates other strategists expect the S&P 500 Index…
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Digg$25,000 Virtual Portfolio – Month 7 – Profiting from Chaos!
by Phil - August 8th, 2011 6:23 am
Wheeeeeeee, this is fun!
There’s nothing like an active virtual portfolio to get you through a rough market. The last update to our very aggressive virtual porfolio was on the July 28th, when I said to Members "On the whole, we’re pretty short so we’ll be either adding longs or cashing in shorts tomorrow to get a little more even into the weekend but still bearish if there’s no debt deal." There was, of course, no debt deal that week and the next morning I said in our Member Alert:
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.
Needless to say, the RUT failed (10% ago!) and we stayed generally bearish. At the time we "only" had $57,760 of virtual cash (after starting with just $25,000!) with $960 worth of unrealized losses in our remaining, mostly bearish positions. How do you think that worked out? That’s right, possibly our biggest gains of the year! In the last two weeks, we closed the following positions as the markets collapsed around us:
- 10 USO 8/5 $36 calls at $1.35, out at $2.35 – up $1,000
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The House of Cards that is Apple
by ilene - July 20th, 2011 12:31 pm
Apple bears, don’t get too excited by the title. – Ilene
The House of Cards that is Apple
Courtesy of Howard Lindzon
There is NO way $AAPL will trade at $400 tomorrow.
Apple is barely hanging on. I mean $RIMM playbook, China knockoffs, Droid, $MSFT and $NOK teaming up….need I drone on. For sure the Gateway and Egghead stores will cut into their margins. The self ‘unhelp’ desk at Best Buy is a winner.
There is no way Apple can survive and grow with $78 billion in Cash. That’s barely enough to buy Goldman Sachs which just prints money or gets handed it by the government.
The iPad is awesome but it’s going to kill Mac sales. The ‘Macbook Air’ is spectacular, but if I have an iPad and an iPhone why would I buy one?
iTunes? ya right… I can just pirate the shit or get a Spotify account.
Steve Jobs died in 2010. That’s not him anymore on stage…have you not seen ‘Weekend at Bernie’s?’
Yep.
Disclosure – Long Apple just in case
Will We Hold It Wednesday – 1,333 or Bust (as usual)
by Phil - July 20th, 2011 8:13 am
Here we go again!
We blew right though our expected bullish levels of Dow 12,500, S&P 1,317, Nasdaq 2,775 and Russell 825 but failed to make 8,300 on the NYSE so, as usual, our biggest and most difficult to manipulate index is holding us back – flashing a warning sign while the other indices scream for us to "party on." Fortunately, as I mentioned in yesterday’s morning post, we had already gone aggressively bullish with the SPY Aug $128/131 bull call spread at $1.83, selling the Sept $120 puts for $1.57 and that net .26 spread is already net $1.86 – up 615% since I posted the trade idea at 12:53 in Monday’s Member Chat.
It’s good to have a few aggressive trades like this to take advantage of market bounces. Before that we had taken the SSO Aug $51/53 bull call spread at $1.05, selling the Sept $44 puts for $1.07 for a net .02 credit at 10:46 in Member Chat (the SPY play was for late-comers who missed out on SSO). The Aug $51/53 spread finished the day yesterday at $1.35 but the real win comes from the short $44 puts, which fell to .70 so the .02 net credit is now a .65 net credit for .67 total profit, up 3,350% in less than 48 hours. See, options are fun!
The only other trade ideas from Monday were a long-term bullish play on RIMM (selling 2013 $22.50 puts for $4.20) a long futures play on the Russell Futures (/TF) off the 810 line (now 835) and I reiterated our bearish spread on CMG as I felt they would disappoint on earnings (they did). Yesterday we picked up a long-term longs on GLW, RYAAY and WFR, half covered our FAS longs (iffy so far), took a poke at shorting the DIA that worked for a quick 10%, shorted oil with a DUG spread (futures too scary) and picked up another short spread on CMG – selling 3 Aug $330 calls for $16 ($4,800) against 2 long Dec $360 calls at $18 ($3,600) for a net $1,200 credit – those should be nice winners this morning!
In the afternoon we flipped more bearish and picked up 10 SPY weekly $133 puts at $1.15 ($1,150 of our virtual dollars) for our $25,000 Virtual Portfolio and those are probably going to hurt this morning as the Dollar has been…
Thursday Thump – The Bernanke Bottom
by Phil - June 23rd, 2011 8:28 am
Well that didn’t take long, did it?
On Tuesday I suggested selling into the day’s rally, saying: "so it’s back to cash as we wait for the crash" and it wasn’t a very long wait as the Greek euphoria wore off quickly and there was nothing from yesterday’s FOMC statement (see Member Chat for details) or Bernanke’s press conference that was supportive for the bulls. In fact, I sent out a Member Alert on the Fed statement right at 12:38 warning: "Dollar poking back over 75 but little reaction overall but this is bearish with the Fed recognizing inflation in their changed language (no QE3)." That led us to grab the QQQ weekly $55 puts at 12:39 for just .30 and they finished the day up 55%.
Of course we had to shake off the fake rally first as the markets topped out around 2:20 but, fortunately, we called that right too as I said to Members: "Fake rally – Sure, what do the minutes say that is bullish? The Fed recognized that inflation is taking hold, they do not intend to extend QE2 and they are downgrading their view on the economy. WHERE’S THE BEEF?" In that comment we also hit the SCO July $46/50 bull call spread at $2, selling USO Aug $35 puts for .96 for a net $1.04 entry on the $4 spread. With USO taking a dive today (but just down to $36.50), SCO should be flying well over $50 – see how that works?
Of course our real play of the day was my morning call to short oil again as they tested the $95 line. At 2pm in Member Chat, ahead of The Bernank (and again at 2:31, while he was speaking), I reiterated the Futures Short to Members at the $95.50 line and we got a drop all the way to $94 last night but it didn’t stop there and this morning we’re down to $92.50.
I don’t advocate holding oil Futures overnight so we’ll just call that a $1.50 win on 345,000 contracts for $517.5M of potential gains so congrats to those who got their share (at a rate of $1,500 per contract!) as we continue to stick it to the bastards at the NYMEX by calling their bluff when they pretend to want to buy barrels for inflated prices.
We added the…
Big Payday for Pre-Earnings Put Buyer on RIMM
by Option Review - June 17th, 2011 8:00 pm
Today’s tickers: RIMM, TMO, CNO & PIP
RIMM - Research In Motion Ltd. – Ouch. Shares in the BlackBerry maker plunged 23.35% today to an intraday- and four-year low of $27.08 following the release of worse-than-anticipated first-quarter earnings on Thursday after the close. Ongoing concerns regarding RIMM’s ability to stay competitive in the smartphone market coupled with the company’s second revision lower to earnings estimates for the full year were reason enough for investors to punish the stock. Options volume on Research In Motion is greater than 565,000 contracts as of 1:05pm in New York. Puts are trading roughly 1.75 times to each single call option in play this afternoon. Trading traffic is heaviest in June contract options expiring today, while weekly options expiring next Friday generated interest, as well. Nearer-term contracts are certainly the most popular today, but traders are also generating substantial volume in longer-dated options. The largest single print in options on the stock thus far in the session appears to be the work of one strategist profiting from RIMM’s pain. It looks like the investor purchased roughly 30,000 puts at the January 2012 $35 strike for a premium of $4.80 on Wednesday. The nose-dive in the price of the underlying stock sent premium on those puts flying, and it appears the trader sold the position for $7.80 a-pop within the first 25 minutes of the opening bell this morning. In roughly 48 hours, the put buyer has banked net profits of $3.00 per contract on the position, or total gains of approximately $9 million. Next, it looks like the investor extended bearish sentiment on the stock by purchasing another chunk of around 30,000 puts at the lower January 2012 $30 strike for a premium of $4.76 each. The fresh lot of puts position the trader to profit should shares in RIMM trade beneath the effective breakeven price of $25.24 at expiration next year. Of course, the put buyer need not wait until expiration to take profits on position if…
Investors Take to Research In Motion Options Ahead of Earnings
by Option Review - June 16th, 2011 4:42 pm
Today’s tickers: RIMM, ULBI, NABI & CX
Strong corporate earnings helped fuel the S&P 500 Index’s more than 30% rally since the end of last summer up to its highest point at 1370 at the start of May. A number of companies are scheduled to report earnings today, including beleaguered Blackberry maker Research In Motion Ltd. Will another spate of potentially strong corporate results inject renewed confidence into the market? Or, will earnings disappoint this quarter as companies struggle with higher energy and commodity prices? Even positive earnings surprises may not be enough to spur the return of risk appetite as less than palatable reports regarding the ongoing European debt crisis push global equities lower and leave investors with a sour taste in their mouths. Domestically, a gain in housing starts and building permits in May as well as a decline in jobless claims last week, give the market some good news to pocket today following Wednesday’s pullback.
RIMM - Research In Motion Ltd. – Options activity on the maker of Blackberry smartphones and PlayBook tablets suggests investors are harboring mixed opinions regarding the direction RIMM’s shares are likely to take following the company’s first-quarter earnings report after U.S. markets have closed for the day. Shares are off their highs of the day, but remain positive in early-afternoon trade. The stock currently trades 0.50% higher on the session at $35.35 just before 12:45pm on the East Coast. Options volume is pushing 110,000 contracts, with investors paying roughly equal attention to call and put options. Trading traffic is heaviest in options with only one trading day remaining to expiration. It looks like some investors are positioning for disappointment, with the majority of the June $32.5 strike puts trading purchased for an average premium of $0.54 apiece. June $30 strike puts…
Wild Weekly Wrap-Up (Part 1) – Our Billion Dollar Oil Shorts!
by Phil - June 11th, 2011 6:08 am
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
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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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