Options Investors Flock to Sallie Mae
by Option Review - December 7th, 2010 4:06 pm
Today’s tickers: SLM, LYB, SRZ & AUY
SLM - SLM Corp. – A barrage of bullish options traders targeted the student loan provider today perhaps on news SLM Corp. will continue to downsize and increase the number of company-wide layoffs to 2,500 by the end of next year. Shares in Sallie Mae rallied as much as 3.4% today to touch an intraday high of $12.28, with shares currently trading 2.35% high on the day at $12.16 just before 12:30 pm. Plain-vanilla call buyers expecting bullish movement in the price of the underlying shares to continue picked up 1,500 in-the-money calls at the December $12 strike for an average premium of $0.36 each. Call buying spread to the higher December $13 strike where more than 4,700 call options were purchased for an average premium of $0.14 a-pop. Investors holding the December $13 strike contracts are prepared to make money should SLM Corp.’s shares surge 8.05% over the current price of $12.16 to exceed the average breakeven point at $13.14 by expiration day this month. Bulls also targeted longer-dated put and call options to gain upside exposure on the stock. It looks like one strategist sold 10,000 puts at the January 2011 $11 strike for a premium of $0.22 each, in order to purchase the same number of April 2011 $15 strike calls at a premium of $0.22 apiece. The investor responsible for the transaction seems to be predicting a sharp recovery in SLM Corp. shares by April of next year. Shares in Sallie Mae would need to rally at least 23.35% for the trader to start to make money above the effective breakeven share price of $15.00. The sale of January 2011 $11 strike puts indicates the investor expects shares will exceed that price level through expiration day. But, also suggests the trader is willing to have 1,000,000 shares of the underlying stock put to him at $11.00 apiece should the puts land in-the-money ahead of January expiration. The sharp rise in demand for…
Weekly Wrap-Up – 10,000 or Bust!
by Phil - October 17th, 2009 8:27 am
I think I was right on the money last week when I said:
The bar for corporate earnings is still set at very easy to beat levels yet, like this limbo-playing child, when they announce their beats of very low expectations we’re going to get all excited and tell them how great they are doing. The problem is, these are not kids who we hope may grow up one day to be President or CEOs of major companies. these ARE CEOs of major companies and they are being paid top salaries for top performance and we, the stock purchasing public, are paying top dollar for what should be SPECTACULAR performance, not beating 75% off last year’s earnings by a penny!
In that post, I rattled off a list of stocks that seemed overpriced to me: AMZN, BIDU, AM, PALM, NFLX, PCLN, URBN, UHS, CERN, CREE, GMCR, CY, SWM, TRLG, BKE and you would have had a fabulous week just shorting those stocks as only NFLX, URBN and CREE stayed positive. Now most newsletter writers would quit right there and make a giant ad saying they were 12 for 15 on the week but, as our members know, THAT’S NO BIG DEAL AT PSW! I’m just going to remind members that they can refer friends to FREE advice like that in our trial newsletter and earn 20% or more off their subscriptions for doing it.
Picking stocks is easy but a few percent here and a few percent there isn’t much fun is it? On that list, the two we attacked were AMZN and BIDU, both of which ran (in our opinion) way too high AND had very liquid and very overpriced call options that we could sell to collect premiums. AMZN is a staple short in our $100K Virtual Portfolio and we had set up BIDU the week before, selling Oct $420 calls for $8.30 and the Oct $430 calls for $7,20. While both went higher on Monday, the fact that we had a plan for managing the trade kept us from panicking and, thankfully, Monday was the only day those positions gave us trouble and both finished the week worthless (100% profit for us).
Adjusting our positions kept us busy this week as we STILL have a slightly bearish bias and I apologize for that but, as I said in Friday’s post: Every time I try to get a little more bullish, they pull me…

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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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