Cisco Call Options Fly off the Shelves
by Andrew Wilkinson - March 8th, 2010 4:06 pm
Today’s tickers: CSCO, DRYS, CIGX, AES, V, MCD, BIIB, SNE, GME & VALE
CSCO - Cisco Systems, Inc. – Bullish call-buying dominated options trading patterns on Cisco today on news the firm is slated to “make a significant announcement that will forever change the internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments.” Cisco’s shares jumped 4.15% to a new 52-week high of $26.25 during the session on a target share price upgrade to $28.00 from $26.00 at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bullish traders purchased approximately 15,800 in-the-money calls at the March $26 strike for a premium of $0.33 apiece and coveted 9,300 calls at the higher March $27 strike for an average premium of $0.10 each. Uber-bullish individuals bought 4,000 calls at the March $28 strike for just two pennies premium per contract. Investors long the closest-to-the-money March $26 strike calls are positioned to accrue profits if Cisco’s shares trade above $26.33 ahead of expiration day. The surge in demand for options on the stock as well as uncertainty surrounding tomorrow’s announcement lifted the reading of overall options implied volatility on Cisco by 17.5% to 22.85% in afternoon trading.
DRYS - DryShips, Inc. – Dry-bulk shipping company, DryShips, Inc., experienced a short-lived dip in the price of its shares in morning trading, but regained its footing this afternoon, rallying 7.77% to $6.10 with about forty minutes remaining in the session. Call-buying action flooded DRYS today with approximately 22,300 now in-the-money calls picked up at the near-term March $6 strike for an average premium of $0.22 apiece. Nearly 12,000 calls were coveted at the higher March $7 strike for $0.05 premium per contract. Optimism spread to the same strike prices in the April contract, as well. Investors secured roughly 11,600 long in-the-money calls at the April $6 strike for an average premium of $0.39 each. Traders bought another 4,000 call options at the higher April $7 strike for $0.16 per contract. Options traders exchanged more than 130,000 contracts on DryShips during the session, which represents about 27% of total existing open interest on the stock of 480,443 contracts. Options implied volatility jumped approximately 34.8% this afternoon to 60.26%.
CIGX - Star Scientific, Inc. – Shares of the maker of dissolvable smokeless tobacco products surged 6.70% to $1.12 today, inspiring one investor to establish a bullish risk reversal on the stock in the August contract. The trader appears to have sold roughly 7,200 puts at the August…
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Weekend Wipe Out - All the Way Back to Mid-November Lows!
by Phil - January 23rd, 2010 11:36 am
Well I hate to say I told you so but…
No wait, that’s nonsense - what market prognosticator doesn’t love to say "I told you so"? Actually, it’s kind of my job to tell you so and the reason I’m so popular is because, more often than not, when I tell you so, I tend to be right. I’m not right all the time and my single biggest flaw is I am often right but sometimes way too early and timing is EVERYTHING in the markets. It’s not good enough to tell you what is going to happen (give things enough time and everything happens eventually, right Cramer?) - I need to get the period right as well so we can turn it into an actionable trading idea that makes money.
As a fundamentalist, I didn’t like the entire last 500 points of the rally. I had predicted the market would finish the year at 10,200 way back when it was down at 8,650 when the idea was we’d have a Santa Clause rally to 20% (10,380) and then a 20% pullback of that run (346) into Jan earnings that would take us back to 10,034 so the entire run from 10,200 to 10,700 REALLY annoyed me. It didn’t annoy me just because it made me wrong - I’m wrong a lot and I’m old enough to have learned how to deal with it. What annoyed me was the manipulation as, clearly, the fundamentals in no way, shape or form justified the additional 5% move up.
I’ve gone on and on about how fake the move was and how manipulated the markets were and how artificial the support was and I think I’ve pulled out the Seinfeld "fake, Fake, FAKE" clip often enough now that I don’t even have to do a link (but I love it, so I do) or explain how it’s a metaphor for recent market activity so I’m not going to waste our valuable time here. Let’s just do a review of the recent action, which is my best way of preparing for the upcoming Members only post where I’ll be charting out new levels and coming up with action plans for the week ahead.
So don’t read this if you can’t stand to hear "I told you so" because this is the review post and I did tell you so!
When did things go wrong? Clearly they were wrong for ages but when did things go wrong enough that they…
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Which Way Wednesday - For Retail Sales?
by Phil - December 23rd, 2009 8:12 am
![[Retail sales chart]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AO101A_RETAI_NS_20081225220014.gif)
Remember this from last year?:
Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday season for beleaguered retailers, as sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending, according to new data released Thursday. Despite a flurry of last-minute shoppers lured by the deep discounts, total retail sales, excluding automobiles, fell over the year-earlier period by 5.5% in November and 8% in December through Christmas Eve, according to MasterCard Inc.’s SpendingPulse unit. "This will go down as the one of the worst holiday sales seasons on record," said Mary Delk, a director in the retail practice at consulting firm Deloitte LLP. "Retailers went from ‘Ho-ho’ to ‘Uh-oh’ to ‘Oh-no.’" The holiday retail-sales decline was much worse than the already-dire picture painted by industry forecasts, which had predicted sales ranging from a 1% drop to a more optimistic increase of 2.2%.
That was the December 26th headline in the WSJ (the chart is from last year too) which presaged poor Q4 earnings that sent the markets off a 27% cliff from Jan 1st through March 9th of this year. The Dow was at 9,000 last January and managed to fall all the way to 6,500 on those retail results - the same retail results we are hoping to beat by 1% this year with the Dow at 10,500. This will be interesting to say the least. We remain skeptical of the rally but have put up a new, very bullish Watch List as we have identified many stocks we can buy into a technical rally if it holds up into the week after New Years as we begin to deploy some of our own sidelined cash.
We held our short-term bearish stance but our premise is wearing thin as even the 2.2% GDP (20% worse than expected) announcement yesterday was somehow taken as good news by the market. Today the WSJ is touting strong interest in a $1.1Bn CRE auction held by the FDIC as another positive market sign - forgetting the fact that these commercial properties are being sold at 50-90% discounts and are just 3% of the over $30Bn of seized assets the FDIC is sitting on and must sell over the next 12 months (so $1.9Bn short of target this month already).
The FDIC must raise more capital in order to seize more banks as their balance sheet hit negative $8.2Bn at the end of September. They had been putting off the sales, hoping for a turnaround but 50…
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Wild Weekly Wrap-Up
by Phil - December 19th, 2009 8:20 am
Wheee - that was fun!
Last week, I asked the question were we "Too Bearish or Just Too Early?" I said in that wrap-up: "This Friday the market topped out about 150 points higher than last Friday, closer to the top of our range so we went much more bearish on Friday, perhaps too bearish considering this was the best Friday finish since Nov 6th and we haven’t had a down Monday since October 26th." We did get the move up we feared on Monday but we stuck to our guns and had a fabulous week.
Even as the market was going against us Monday morning, my first Alert of the week to members at 9:44 said: "I’m still more inclined to look downward at: Dow 10,250, S&P 1,100, Nasdaq 2,187, NYSE 7,200 and Russell 600… I’m still bearish because oil is weak, gold is weak, the financials (XLF at 14.30) are weak and most of the good news we are hearing is nothing but fluff." That was a pretty good call as we hit our target levels yesterday and held them, so we flipped more bullish right at 11:30 on Friday, in what was some very good timing for our intra-day play.
We are still on a stock market roller coaster that’s going to have plenty of ups and down in the thin, holiday trading that will likely characterize the end of the year. The market will be closed 2 Fridays in a row and good luck finding people around this Thursday or the next one so 6 proper trading days left to 2009 at best. We got out - that drop was very satisfying and we’ve moved mainly to cash (our $100K Portfolio has $88,000 in cash at $107,249 at the end of it’s first month). Last week we were able to cash out the bull side, this week we got satisfaction from our bear plays and that leaves us footloose and fancy free to have fun the next two weeks. If our day trading goes as well as it did on Friday, we can end this year with quite a bang.
Manic Monday - Dubai, CitiGroup and GS Move Markets
This picture says it all. When you want to blow smoke up investors’ asses, the dream team of economic BS is Greenspan and Cramer, who appeared on Meet the Press last Sunday to tell us that the market is smarter than reality and Greenspan actually had the nerve to say that we are underestimating…
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Thrill Ride Thursday
by Phil - December 17th, 2009 8:30 am
Wheee - this is fun!
Everything went according to plan yesterday as the very fake pre-market pump I warned you about in the morning post very quickly turned into a day of carnage for the markets. Sure we only ended up down 10 points, but it was down 100 from the open.
Fortunately, we have learned how to ride this bull and we grabbed the DIA $105 puts at a .55 average per my 9:47 Alert to Members and we cashed those out at .90 (up 63%) in the afternoon. We also had a quick 20% winner on Dec QID calls and we kept the Jan QIDs as our continuing bearish bet as we didn’t want to risk a possible overnight pump job taking the markets back up with open Dec calls. Still, we weren’t worried enough to cover our longer DIA puts so we were very bearish but, as I said yesterday: "We have neglected to do is play the futures pump for the past week as we keep expecting something very bad to happen and boy would we feel silly if we were just 55% bearish when this house of cards comes tumbling down."
It has been volume, volume, volume that kep me questioning the rallies this year - the fact that all the up moves come on very thin volume (ie. manipulated) while all day long the insiders sell to the suckers who are draw in by the futures action and stick saves (it’s a team effort). This chart from Ron Greiss illustrates what’s wrong with our rally on a more macro level:
While we are certainly not ready to do a bearish victory dance on this tiny little correction, we certainly feel a heck of a lot better about our decision to stay bearish. In addition to adding bearish DIA and QID plays yesterday, we (of course) added more SRS at our target bottom, took the money and ran on EWJ, shorted XTO (rumors XOM may walk), got more UUP and shorted V. Our long covers were TOL and the VIX but it was a very bearish day of picks, especially considering our already bearish stance (see Weekend Wrap-Up - Too Bearish or Just too Early?).
Also a little too early was our positioning for an up move in the Dollar, which began in early November when I wrote a lengthy article on the Dollar, Gold, Oil, The CRB and the Fed and why I felt we were reaching the…
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Option Trader Prescribes Bullish Risk Reversal on CVS
by Andrew Wilkinson - November 19th, 2009 5:43 pm
Today’s tickers: CVS, LIZ, ITMN, MA, V, RF, KG, HW, WSM, AEP & NTAP
CVS - CVS Caremark Corp. – Shares of the pharmacy retail chain are up 1.5% to $31.11 perhaps due, in part, to the ‘buy’ rating it received at UBS today. Optimistic options activity took place in the December contract as one investor initiated a bullish risk reversal. It appears the trader sold 4,400 puts at the December 31 strike for an average premium of 94 cents apiece in order to finance the purchase of the same number of calls at the higher December 32 strike for 63 cents each. The investor pockets a 31 cent credit on the trade, which he retains in full as long as shares remain above $31.00 through expiration. Additional profits accumulate if CVS’s shares rally above $32.00.
LIZ - Liz Claiborne, Inc. – A 15,000-lot covered call in the January 2011 contract on Liz Claiborne today suggests shares are likely to recover, albeit at a glacial pace. Shares of the apparel and accessories retailer suffered a 5% decline to $4.55 during the trading session. One investor effectively purchased shares of the underlying stock for $3.30 apiece by selling 15,000 calls at the January 2011 5.0 strike for a premium of 1.25 each. Thus, the trader stands ready to accrue gains of 51% if shares of LIZ appreciate to $5.00 by expiration. The long-term positioning of the covered call play provides several advantages to the investor. One advantage is that the call options do not expire for another 13 months, which leaves ample time for LIZ’s shares to appreciate up to the strike price of $5.00. The 15,000-lot call transaction represents nearly 50% of the total existing open interest on LIZ of 31,502 contracts. Note that shares last traded above $5.00 yesterday at approximately 10:35 am (EDT).
ITMN - InterMune, Inc. – A bull call spread on the biotechnology company today suggests shares could rally significantly by expiration in April 2010. Bullish options activity on the stock belies the more than 3% decline in ITMN’s shares during the session to $10.94. The call spread involved the purchase of 3,750 calls at the April 15 strike for an average premium of 2.25 each, marked against the sale of the same number of calls at the higher April 25 strike for 75 cents apiece. The net cost of the transaction amounts to 1.50 per contract. The optimistic investor is positioned…
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Jobless Thursday - Max Keiser Bashes Banks
by Phil - October 22nd, 2009 8:19 am
I’ve never embedded a video before but you just have to see this so I’m learning a new trick. Keiser puts out some gems like:
Goldmans Sachs, JPM, CitigGroup are all engaged in accounting fraud- The American peasants have got to be the stupidest people in the World today. They don’t mind becoming peasants, they don’t mind living like peasants and, if that’s the case, then we should do nothing to stop them from sliding into a peasant class.
- Banks are just stealing money outright from the World economy.
- There is no liquidity being provided by the banks, they are hoarding their cash and non-disclosing their losses.
- In part 2 of the video: "The reality is people are dying due to the actions of JPM, GS and the Wall Street Jihadists"
Max compares Wall Street bankers to suicide bombers and predicts it is only a matter of time before they are back before Congress with a gun to their heads threatening the destruction of America if they don’t get another bailout. I’m glad he said it an not me because I get enough hate mail from GS fans… Keiser makes the point that, while the American people may put up with this nonsense, the leaders of Europe and Russia and China look at what’s going on here and have no faith in our currency.
I think this is great as it saves me from ranting and raving this morning. I had my fill in yesterday’s post when I said the only way to play this market to the bull side is to suspend all logical disbelief. Fortunately, we had a huge, ridiculous run-up in the morning that gave us tremendous shorting opportunties. Even as the market was rising, in my 9:56 Alert to Members, we targeted the DIA $99 puts at $1.30 and those finished the day at $2 (up 54%) and in my 10:32 Alert to Members we sold the FAZ $19 puts for $1.80 and those finished the day at $1.20 (up 33%). We also took short plays as the market topped on MS, IYT, CS, ICE, V, GMCR, DD, EBAY and even our beloved AAPL as the market was just too ridiculous looking to be bullish.
As usual, we jumped on top of the Beige Book and right at 2:02 I commented that the headlines didn’t seem so hot and by 2:50 we had a thorough breakdown and determined that SRS was the way to go as the statements regarding…
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Japan Bear Goes Defensive on Nikkei
by Andrew Wilkinson - September 25th, 2009 4:22 pm
Today’s tickers: EWJ, V, JPM & EFA
EWJ - A massive options position has been initiated on the Japan exchange-traded fund this morning amid a slight 0.3% increase in shares to $10.13. The 150,000 contracts exchanged on the EWJ today are likely the work of one investor who was probably also responsible for another 100,000 contracts traded late yesterday afternoon. The trader appears to have sold 75,000 calls at the January 2011 12 strike for a premium of 35 cents apiece in order to partially finance the purchase of 75,000 puts at the March 2010 10 strike for 65 cents each. The net cost of the spread amounts to 30 cents per contract for a total cost of $2,250,000. Perhaps the investor established the trade to protect a long position in the underlying stock because he is concerned by prospects for price weakness through expiration in March. If this is the case, downside protection will kick in if the price of the fund slips 4% to breach the breakeven point at $9.70. Interestingly, another 100,000 contracts were exchanged at the same strike prices during yesterday’s trading session for a net cost of 28 cents apiece. Both the calls and puts traded to the middle of the market making it difficult to discern magnitude. However, we believe it is likely the investor has increased the size of the protective stance. This would leave the trader short 125,000 calls in the January 2011 contract and long 125,000 puts in the March contract. – iShares Japan Index Fund –
V - Investors piled into put options on the electronic payments network, pushing the global financial services brand onto our ‘most active by options volume’ market scanner. Shares declined as much as 5.5% this morning to $69.68, but have since recovered slightly to stand 3% lower at $71.13. Traders bracing for further bearish momentum in the stock vied for near-term puts in the October contract. The most pessimistic individuals picked up 1,000 puts at the October 65 strike for 59 cents each. The October 67.5 strike had approximately 6,000 puts purchased for an average premium of 1.27 apiece. Finally, the now in-the-money October 72.5 strike had nearly 3,000 put options coveted by bearish traders for about 3.16 per contract. The rise in demand for put options fueled the 20% rise in option implied volatility experienced by Visa today. The stock’s implied volatility reading shifted up from a…
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Which Way Wednesday - Fed Edition
by Phil - September 23rd, 2009 8:22 am
We’re just waiting on the Fed today, as are the rest of the markets.
Yesterday’s volume was the lowest since Sept 11th but not as low as Monday, which was our lowest volume since the end of June, just before we had a 5% correction. June 26th and 29th were our last two consecutive ultra-low volume days but June 30th was much bigger (a down 100 day), July 1st was up again on low volume and then July 2nd was another big down day and we bottomed out on July 10th. That was the time that the media was telling us we were forming a "classic" head and shoulders pattern and were doomed to revisit the March lows. It was also the last time we enthusiastically bought stocks.
At the time of that weekly review (7/11), we had CAL at $10 (now $16.82), CBS at $5.97 (now $12.58), COST at $43.45 (now $58.58), CVX - who we just shorted - at $58.20 (now $72.60), DIS at $22.41 (now $28.38), EXM at $6.05 (now $7.32), RT at $7.12 (now $8.85), SNDK at $14.47 (now $22.91), SPY at $87.96 (now $107.27), SPWRA at $22.35 (now $32.63), SUN at $22.09 (now $27.75), V at $59.86 (now $74.41), VLO at $15.57 (now $20.50), WFR at $16.61 (now 19.09), X at $30.77 (now $50.45), XLF at $11.10 (now $15.35), XOM at $65.12 (now $69.85) and ZION at $11 (now $19). Of course our members had much better entries as we had been targeting our entries on all of those but anyone reading our weekend review on July 11th could have played along at home from those prices (we even spiked down at Monday’s open) and when I say we are now bearish - it is that we are bearishly protecting these ridiculous profits - the kind of profits you usually don’t get after 3 years, not 3 months!
Overall, the broader market is up 20% over that time so it can be argued that a monkey with a dart board could have made good picks at that time but, if you read that week’s notes - you’ll notice that this monkey was screaming for people to buy and was going against what pretty much EVERY other analyst was saying and I was confident enough to lay out my picks, my strategy and my fundamental arguments for everyone to see. It would have really sucked if I was wrong, but…
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Raging Gold Demand Delivers Gains for Barrick Gold Options Trader
by Andrew Wilkinson - September 3rd, 2009 5:57 pm
Today’s tickers: ABX, V, HOG & MCO
ABX - Notable options activity on the world’s largest producer of gold caught our eye today as the stock continues higher for the second day running. Shares of ABX rallied 2.5% to $38.93 as dollar weakness and rising demand for precious metals helped boost the price of gold to its highest level in three months. Option trades in the front months suggest investors believe the rally may taper off. One trader who initiated a call spread on Tuesday chose to unravel the position this morning to take in profits. He originally purchased the 6,000 lot spread at the October 37.5/41 strikes for a net cost of 70 cents per contract. Today he closed out the position by selling 6,000 calls at the October 37.5 strike for 2.95 each and buying back 6,000 calls at the higher October 41 strike for 1.45 apiece. The 1.50 credit received by closing out the call spread is reduced by the 70 cent purchase price of the original transaction, leaving the trader with net profits of 80 cents per contract. Thus, the investor has reeled in total profits of $480,000. Indications of lower volatility for ABX was apparent by the sold strangle play enacted in the September contract. Traders shed approximately 3,500 calls at the September 39 strike for a dollar apiece in conjunction with the sale of about 3,500 puts at the lower September 37 strike for 80 cents each. The gross premium pocketed on the sale amounts to 1.80 per contract and is full retained as long as shares remain ‘strangled’ within the confines of the strike prices previously described. – Barrick Gold Corp. –
V - Bullish risk reversals accumulated in the January 2011 contract on the credit card company this morning as far-term optimists shed put options to finance the purchase of calls. Shares of the firm were trading down earlier in the session, but have since recovered, gaining less than 0.5% to $70.20. Investors employing the reversal strategy looked to the January 70 strike price to sell 12,000 puts for a premium of 11.30 each. The sale of the puts more than offset the cost of picking up 12,000 calls at the higher January 85 strike for 6.00 per contract. Traders retain the 5.30 credit pocketed on the transaction if shares remain higher than $70.00 by expiration in January 2011. Additional profits could accumulate if shares of…
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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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