AT&T Call Volume Jumps As New Trading Year Begins
by Option Review - January 3rd, 2012 1:00 pm
Today’s tickers: T, PAYX, LXK & THRX
T - AT&T Inc. – A large bullish position initiated in AT&T call options this morning indicates at least one strategist expects shares in the wireless provider to near their highest of the past 52 weeks. The stock rose 0.85% to $30.49 in the first half of the first trading session of 2012. Options volume on AT&T is heaviest at the Feb. $31 strike, where more than 26,000 call options changed hands against open interest of 6,174 contracts. The bulk of the volume was purchased in one block of roughly 20,400 calls at a premium of $0.26 each. The call buyer may profit at expiration next month in the event that shares in AT&T rally another 2.5% to surpass the breakeven price of $31.26. The wireless provider is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings ahead of the opening bell on January 26.
PAYX - Paychex, Inc. – A burst of call and put activity on Paychex in the first hour of trade in the New Year suggests the price of the underlying is likely to make big moves ahead of February expiration. Shares in the provider of employee benefits outsourcing solutions to small and medium sized businesses rose 1.65% to stand at $30.61 as of 11:40 AM ET. Likely the work of one investor, it appears both calls and puts were purchased on Paychex this morning in anticipation of increased volatility in the share price. It looks like the trader purchased roughly 4,000 calls at the Feb. $31 strike for an average premium of $0.62 each, and purchased around 2,650 in-the-money puts at the same strike at a premium of $1.20 apiece. The transactions were not marked as a spread or straddle, but the implications of each position are similar to those of a long straddle. The long calls…
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DiggMonday Madness – G20 FinMins Set Two Week Deadline
by Phil - October 17th, 2011 8:01 am
Two weeks!
European leaders have two weeks to settle differences and flesh out a strategy to terminate their sovereign debt crisis as global finance chiefs warn failure to do so would endanger the world economy. “The risk of a recession would be increased dramatically were the Europeans to fail to accomplish goals that they’ve set for themselves,” Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said after the G-20 meeting on Saturday.
The Brussels meeting “has the potential to turn into a positive historic moment,” Joachim Fels, London-based chief economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to clients yesterday. “But it could also easily turn into a negative catalyst.”
Europe’s plan, which has still to be made public, includes writing down Greek bonds by as much as 50 percent, establishing a backstop for banks and magnifying the strength of the 440 billion-euro ($611 billion) temporary rescue fund known as the European Financial Stability Facility. “The plan has the right elements,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in Paris. “They clearly have more work to do on the strategy and the details.”
The G-20 officials — who met to prepare for a Nov. 3-4 gathering of leaders in Cannes, France (and we’re fondly remembering London’s 2009 meeting with the graphic on the right) — said in a statement that the world economy faces “heightened tensions and significant downside risks.” European authorities must “decisively address the current challenges through a comprehensive plan.”
The policy makers held out the possibility of rewarding European action with more aid from the International Monetary Fund, while splitting over whether the Washington-based lender’s $390 billion war chest needs topping up. Europe’s latest strategy hinges on putting Greece, whose government forecasts its debt to reach 172 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, on a sustainable path. Austerity has plunged the country deeper into recession and provoked civil unrest that threatens political stability.
My reaction to this in Member Chat this Morning was to call for shorting the jacked up Dow Futures (/YM) at 11,600, saying:
Speaking of the illusion of power – yet another G20 meeting ends with yet another plan to have a plan but this time, for some insane reason, they only gave themselves a week to fix everything. I’ll be writing about this this morning but the gist of it is the Finance Ministers have essentially sent their own
…
Whipsaw Wednesday – What Us Worry?
by Phil - September 7th, 2011 8:25 am
That was easy!
Only 3 days of panic and we’re back to manic already – I’d say that was a record but our last panic only lasted two days, on August 18th and 19th, when we dropped 600 points before bouncing back 800 points the next week so this last 3-day, 600-point drop was gentle by comparison. That, of course, did not stop the usual round of Doomcasters from declaring the end of the World (especially the European section) as we know it but that was all so yesterday morning and now it’s 24 hours later and the Dow is up 300 from that bottom in the pre-markets.
Pre-market yesterday we were bullish but cautious, going long on Dow (/YM) futures at 11,000 (now 11,227 – up $1,135 per contract) and Russell (/TF) Futures at 666 (now 688, up $2,200 per contract) and our bullish EWG spread from the morning post should be going gangbusters already as the DAX pops 3% this morning!
We also laid out new hedge ideas on EDZ and GLD but the point of those was, wisely, to take the money and run on our old hedges as they bottomed out in the morning (max profit), trading in our well-ridden horses for fresh ones that have more time to expiration and lower deltas to snap back on a bounce is all part of our range-trading strategy – we may need those hedges again, just not now….
By the time the market opened, things looked too good not to play bullish and we ended up picking 19 bullish plays in yesterday’s Member Chat with not one bearish one. My comment to Members in the 9:44 Alert, where we took a very aggressive upside play on the Dow was: "Damn, and I said I wasn’t going to get too bullish. Oh well, what can you do?" As I have been pointing out in our Range Trading posts – sometimes you just have to go with the flow…
Just 18 minutes later, I put up 6 long-term trade ideas on CAT, DIS, HOV, JPM, SKX and T as we took advantage of low prices, a probable bottom and a high VIX. The nice thing about our buy/writes is that they have a built-in 20% discount (see "How to Buy a Stock for a 15-20% Discount") and can usually be scaled in to ride…
Options Feeding Frenzy Ensues On AT&T As DOJ Threatens T-Mobile Deal
by Option Review - August 31st, 2011 3:24 pm
Today’s tickers: T, LYB, XLY & NRG
T - AT&T, Inc. – The cost of buying AT&T put options that expire at the end of the week exploded after the U.S. Justice Department filed suit to block the telecommunications company’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA, Inc., on grounds the deal would hamper competition in the wireless market. Shares in Dallas, Texas-based AT&T fell as much as 5.5% on the news to $28.00, while options implied volatility jumped 30.0% to 27.97%. Frenzied options trading ensued on AT&T during a news conference held to explain the lawsuit. Nearly 200,000 option contracts have changed hands on the stock as of 1:25 pm in New York. Put options are more active, with around 1.5 puts trading on AT&T for each single call option in play this afternoon.
Trading traffic in the weeklies suggests investors are scrambling for near-term downside protection and asking questions later. Puts granting the right to sell shares in the wireless provider at $29.00 were purchased roughly 1,000 times for just $0.08 apiece around one hour into the trading session, but news of the lawsuit saw premium required to buy those puts sky-rocket to $1.02 in under 60 minutes. All told, more than 7,100 of the September ’02 $29 strike puts changed hands against open interest of 1,432 contracts thus far today. It looks like the majority of the contracts were purchased for an average premium of $0.25 apiece. Investors piled into puts at the Sept. ’02 $28 strike, as well, driving volume up past 9,600 contracts by lunchtime. On the flip-side, traders expecting the stock to rebound somewhat before the week is out, picked up nearly 3,000 calls at the Sept. ’02 $29 strike at an average premium of $0.16 each, and another 1,000 calls…
F’ing Thursday – Give Us a Break!
by Phil - August 11th, 2011 8:30 am
Holy cow – when will it end?
As I mentioned yesterday, we were expecting a whipsaw after the morning sell-off and we played that perfectly with bullish trades on the DIA and OIH and, as we move up, we took bearish plays on GLL, TZA and QQQ. All good so far but then we did a little bottom fishing before wising up and shorting USO into the close – just in case. The futures were up 2% this morning at 5am and I had to warn our Members:
Overall, this is too weak to get us over the hump and we are going to have to lean a little more bearish unless we can follow Europe up 2.5% or more. Our charts will turn from "spiking low on volume" to "consolidating for a move below 20%" very quickly if we don’t gets something bullish going by tomorrow.
The Dollar was at 74.64 at the time and it’s only 75.04 now (7:50) but the futures have gone from up 2% to down 1% in less than 3 hours – that is insane! How are retail investors supposed to play this market? The average person does not have the stomach for watching their virtual portfolio’s value go up and down 5% a day – at some point they are all going to pull the plug and walk away. Of course, as I was saying yesterday – that’s just what the Banksters want you to do, assuming they know QE3 is right around the corner, accompanied by a 20%+ market rally into the year’s end.
Anyway, hope is NOT a strategy for the prudent investor so I published another set of Disaster Hedges this morning as it’s time to add a layer to our longer hedges (which are now deeply in the money). I hate to chase these plays but one thing we learned in 2008 is that there may never be a bottom (not in the short run) no matter how oversold you think things may be. Was the market wrong in 2008 to go below S&P 1,000? Well 3 years of subsequent trading seem to indicate that it was – but that did not stop us from dropping 33% lower, to 666 (the mark of the Blankfein!).
Our entire goal in a sell-off like this is to simply preserve our cash. The lower we…
Mega-Merger Monday – T Can Be “Heard Now” by 40%
by Phil - March 21st, 2011 7:47 am
Didn’t we break these guys up?
Oh anti-trust, anti-trust, wherefore art thou anti-trust? Don’t get me wrong, I love T as an investment, we just made a play on them last week with their big, fat, 6% dividend. Now they are using debt to finance a $39Bn purchase of DT’s T-Mobile division as the German-based company is sick and tired of getting paid in worthless dollars, which add nothing to their Euro-based earnings. Although one may think regulators would actually wake up and say "Huh?" to this deal – AT&T was confident enough to put up a $3Bn breakup fee and you don’t do something like that unless you’ve already spent $300M buying all the votes you need ahead of time.
"AT&T anticipates regulators will require it to divest wireless spectrum and subscribers as a condition for approval," said a person with knowledge of the situation. These things are all worked out long before they are announced but let’s hear it from the little guy anyway: "The combination of the second-largest wireless carrier with the fourth-largest is ‘unthinkable’,” Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington-based advocacy group, said in a statement. “We know the results of arrangements like this — higher prices, fewer choices, less innovation.” Isn’t he cute?
In addition to surpassing Verizon Wireless, AT&T could leave Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) as a far weaker No. 3 player in the industry, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst for Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Washington. “AT&T was broken up and now it’s back with a vengeance,” said Bert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute, a Washington-based non-profit researcher that challenges what it sees as abuses of concentrated economic power. “We have to decide if we’re happy with the idea of going back to monopolistic treatment of the telecom industry. AT&T has come back to monopolistic power just like the Terminator.”
Is T calling a bottom to the dollar? Probably. You don’t spend $39Bn to buy a 40% market share in a country with declining revenues. T is also calling a bottom to lending rates and probably making a bet on inflation as well – all in all, pretty much exactly what we’re playing the market for so, from a T shareholder perspective – I love this acquisition. Nothing makes money like a monopoly (just ask Carlos Slim) and, as Steve Colbert illustrates above, AT&T has…
Weekend Reading – Reviewing the Reviews
by Phil - January 1st, 2011 8:28 am
I am still trying to get more bullish.
I was thinking about writing something cute like I resolve to get more bullish but that would be wrong. I try, in my own humble way, to "get" the market right. That means I am not bullish or bearish but Truthish (to further botch Stephen Colbert’s use of the word) and, as Buddah says: "There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." Confucious reminds us that there are three methods by which we may learn wisdom: "First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
In that spirit, we will spend the day in reflection so that we are better able to start on that long road to the truth so that we will be better able to imitate the things that will work in the year to come while trying to avoid making mistakes that will give us bitter experiences.
This post is not about me – We had a fantastic year and I’ve already given some outlook for 2011 back on the 19th in that weekend’s "It’s Never too Early to Predict the Future" and our current position is short-term bearish in the Jan-April time-frame, looking for a pullback to at least 1,200 on the S&P and possibly back to 1,150.
After that, we are expecting a return to steady gains but without the irrational exuberance we’re currently experiencing. So no, I am not bearish – I simply think we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. Since we don’t know where the rally train will stop, we have our "Breakout Defense – 5,000% in 5 Trades or Less" from Dec 11th, which were a set of very bullish, highly levered plays where a little bet can pay off a lot if we simply hold our long-established breakout levels.
How much is "a lot"? Well my GE trade idea, for example, was to sell the 2013 $12.50 puts for $1.10 (net $1.15 in ordinary margin according to TOS) and to use that money to buy the 2012 $17.50/20 bull call spread for .95, which was a net .15 credit on a $2.50 spread that was on the money at the time. GE has gained about .75 since the 11th and…
Defending Your Virtual Portfolio With Dividends – Q4 (Members Only)
by Phil - October 23rd, 2010 7:55 am
In uncertain markets, dividends can give you a critical investing edge.
As you can see from the chart on the left, just mindlessly investing in dividend-paying stocks can give you more than a 2:1 annual advantage in your investments.
Of course, here at PSW, we teach the art of selling options premiums – something that turns virtually any stock into a "dividend" payer. For example, MSFT is only a small, 2% dividend-payer but a fairly solid cash-machine of a stock that we don’t feel is likely to go bankrupt overnight so it makes for a nice safe staple in a long-term virtual portfolio. But MSFT is also a very poorly-run company that hasn’t grown in 20 years but we can make it a much more interesting stock by simply selling covered calls.
For example, in our August edition of Dividend Payers, we looked at MSFT for $24.23 and we sell the Sept $24 calls for .77. This lowered our effective basis to $23.46 and selling the call putus in no special danger – we simply agreed to sell MSFT for $24 on expiration day in September (the 17th).
The stock was called away from us, and we made a .54 profit or 2.3% of our net $23.46 cash investment in less than 30 days. That works out to a 26% annualized ROI and we had an opportunity (as we had expected) to buy the stock again and again at $24 on Oct 4th and 5th and sell the November $24 calls for .90 for a net $23.10 re-entry and ANOTHER 3.8% GAIN if we are called away at $24 or greater on Nov 19th. Doesn’t that beat waiting a whole quarter for your 1% dividend checks?
Of course, you can optimize all this with timing and we favor stocks that are on sale – this is just a very simple example of how our most basic options strategy can drastically boost your annual returns on any stock in your virtual portfolio.
Let’s say you don’t want to mess around with MSFT every month. You could have simply sold the 2012 $22.50s for $4.40 (also suggested in the August post), that dropped your net entry from $24.23 to $19.83 and getting called away at $22.50 would be a profit of 13.5% over 17 months PLUS you would be getting your…
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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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