WebMD Options In Play As Shares Nosedive
by Option Review - January 10th, 2012 2:24 pm
Today’s tickers: WBMD, AMAT & BRCD
WBMD - WebMD Health Corp. – Shares in the health information services provider dropped like a rock, falling 32.0% to as low as $25.01 on Tuesday, on news talks to potentially sell the company have ended, net income is expected to be lower in 2012, and the CEO of the company has resigned. The steep pullback in the price of the underlying saw heavier-than-usual activity in WebMD calls and puts, with intraday volume rising to 14,800 in early-afternoon trade against overall open interest of 29,100 positions. Though some strategists engaged in bearish put buying in the name, it appears much of the action was initiated by investors gearing up for a potential rebound in the stock. Roughly 1.6 call options changed hands on WebMD for each single put option in play thus far in the session. Calls are most active at the Jan. $30 strike where more than 2,200 contracts traded against open interest of just 4 positions. Earlier this morning, with shares hovering around $26.00, investors paid an average of $0.35 per contract for the right to buy the stock at $30.00 by January expiration. The modest intraday recovery since then has lifted premium to buy the calls up to $0.50 as of 1:40 PM in New York. Traders long the calls at an average of $0.35 each may profit at expiration if shares in WBMD surge 13.25% over the current price of $26.80 to exceed the average breakeven point at $30.35. Meanwhile, put buyers in the front month at the $22.5 and $25 strikes may see the value of their options rise if shares take another hit ahead of expiration next week.
AMAT - Applied Materials, Inc. – A large trade in Applied Materials…
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Put Sellers and Call Buyers Prepare for Dell Bid for Brocade
by Option Review - June 2nd, 2011 5:00 pm
Today’s tickers: BRCD, IP, APOL & DHI
BRCD - Brocade Communications Systems Inc. – Options volume is heavy in switcher-maker Brocade after a broker note predicted that it fits the bill for a bid from Dell. Shares in Brocade reached a 52-week high after the analyst noted that cash-rich Dell filed a debt-shelf earlier in the week of $3.4 billion or just about enough to buy Brocade if it wanted to change course and enter the networking market. One investor appeared to sell 11,400 put options expiring July at the $6.00 strike presumably on the assumption that its shares remain a hotbed of speculation for the next several weeks. The analyst’s note put a price tag on the stock of $10.00 underpinning a surge in the stock, which rose to $7.20 at the day’s best. Call options expiring next month were also well bid with the $8.00 strike proving most popular. Around 25,000 options granting the right to buy were exchanged with a current price of just 20 cents indicating a one-in-four chance of success over the next five weeks.
IP - International Paper – Notable activity in options on the paper-maker indicate one investor giving up on a good idea. Options volume of 20,935 on Thursday was made up of just two trades involving 10,000 lots each in what appears to be the closure of a losing calendar spread. On May 19 when shares in International Paper were trading one dollar higher than today at $31.67 an investor bought the same amount of call options expiring in July to buy calls expiring in January. The trade involved the $32 strike price in July and the $36 strike in January with the investor hoping for a steady climb in IP’s shares in the meantime. At the time the trade cost the…
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Bulls Take the Wheel, Initiate Recovery Plays Using Ford Options
by Option Review - November 23rd, 2010 4:06 pm
Today’s tickers: F, TOL, BRCD, LOW, NUAN, WAG & IFF
F - Ford Motor Co. – The automaker’s shares edged 2.45% lower this afternoon to $15.80, but investors expecting to see Ford rebound and rally in the next few months initiated bullish plays using put and call options expiring in February 2011. It looks like one trader purchased a bull call spread, while another investor put on a bullish risk reversal. The call spreader picked up 5,000 contracts at the February 2011 $16 strike for a premium of $1.24 each, and sold the same number of calls at the higher February 2011 $20 strike for a premium of $0.20 apiece. Net premium paid to establish the spread amounts to $1.04 per contract. Thus, the responsible party is prepared to make money should shares in Ford Motor Co. surge 7.85% over the current price of $15.80 to surpass the effective breakeven point at $17.04 by February expiration. The call-spreader could end up walking away with maximum potential profits of $2.96 per contract if Ford’s shares jump 26.6% to trade above $20.00 by expiration day next year. The other bullish play in the February 2011 contract appears to be the work of an investor selling 1,990 February 2011 $15 strike puts at a premium of $0.69 each in order to purchase the same number of February 2011 $18 strike calls for a premium of $0.50 a-pop. The transaction results in a net credit of $0.19 per contract, which the investor keeps as long as shares in Ford exceed $15.00 through expiration. Additional profits start to accrue for the trader should shares rally 13.9% to trade above $18.00 before the contracts expire. The net credit received by the investor provides limited downside protection should shares continue to head south. The investor will face losses, however, if Ford’s shares trade below the effective breakeven price of $14.81 in the next few months to expiration.…
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Advanced Pattern Recognition: Omega III Weekly Wrap-Up
by phil - June 19th, 2010 6:46 am
What a fine and predictable week it was!
How can you not have fun when the market does exactly what you expect it to do every day? Why it’s almost as if we stole Goldman Sach’s evil playbook (and the Russell once again is at 666) so we too can make profits EVERY SINGLE TRADING DAY – just like they do! This is a real testament to my famous saying:
We don’t care IF the game is rigged, as long as we know HOW it is rigged so we can place our bets accordingly.
Remember it was last summer that Goldman’s secret trading program was stolen. At the time, Goldman Sachs asserted that: "There is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways." I believe this was a misquote and what GS meant to say was that there was a danger someone ELSE could use it to manipulate the markets in unfair ways. Was it just a coincidence that the indictment of computer thief Sergey Aleynikov on Feb 11th coincided with the beginning of this year’s massive rally or was that the day GS regained sole control of their pet program?
Does this sound conspiratorial? Well perhaps then you haven’t read Tim Lavin’s "Monsters in the Markets," where he points out: "Algorithms now trigger 70 percent of all trades in U.S. equities. The speed and volume of everyday trading have propelled the market into a new and esoteric dimension, and rendered traders in the pits largely obsolete… At least a few high-frequency traders have learned to make a killing by detecting the more simplistic algo strategies deployed by basic pension funds and mutual funds, buying the next stock the funds plan to buy, and then selling it to them at a higher price. This may not be illegal, but it’s almost certainly unfair to the funds’ investors. “It is increasingly clear that there are quite a number of high-frequency bandits in the high- frequency-trading community who pump up volume statistics, front-run investor orders, increase transaction costs, and hurt real liquidity,” according to former NASDAQ vice-chairman David Weild."
We certainly know better than to trust our money to fund managers! Last Friday ("Pattern Recognition 101"), we determined that the TradeBots were following the rally pattern we now call Omega III and that meant we expected the day to finish…
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Weekly Wrap-Up – Buffett’s Daring Derivative Deal Does Well
by phil - February 28th, 2010 9:30 am
I was going to talk about Buffett's annual letter to investors.
Fortunately, I procrastinated and other people did some detailed reporting like Ravi Nagarajan, Andy Fry, Scott Patterson and Joe Del Bruno – who does a great job of pointing out that Berkshire's 4th quarter results were propped up by Buffett's $1.05Bn gains in derivatives betting (something Buffett himself once called "weapons of mass financial destruction" but, as we well know – if you can't beat them…), which accounted for 1/3 of Berkshire's $3.06Bn profits.
Buffett's biggest bet was selling a put against the S&P 500 back in March – a move I said at the time was BRILLIANT and Buffett himself now says about his own options trading: "We are delighted that we hold the derivatives contracts that we do. To date, we have significantly profited from the float they provide. We expect also to earn further investment income over the life of our contracts."
What did Buffett do? Exactly what we teach you to do here at PSW - he took advantage of an irrational move in the markets and SOLD INTO THE EXCITEMENT, getting a fat premium from some sucker that bet the S&P would not hold 666 5 years from now. Buffett effectively sold $5Bn worth of puts that expires worthless at S&P 700 between 2019 and 2027, putting $5Bn in his pocket and holding aside $1Bn in margin, which is how much he's already ahead on the bet. Like a good options trader, he has a plan and he's trading his plan, making sure his investment is on track and patiently letting time do it's work as it eats away at the put-holder's premium.
What about the risk? Well I can't speak for Buffett's stop-loss technique but we're talking about a company that has (had) $40Bn in cash using their excess margin to make a $5Bn bet that the S&P would not stay below 700 for 10 years. Buffett and I both tell people – NEVER buy a stock (or sell a put against one) that you are not willing to own for 10 years. The S&P was 5% below at the time and would have had to drop, perhaps, 20% more to cost him $1Bn so let's call the stop 550 on the S&P where Buffett risked 2.5% of his cash against a posible 400% gain on his $1Bn risk allocation over 10+ years. While it is true that if the…
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Lam Research Options Draw Optimistic Crowd
by Option Review - February 23rd, 2010 5:24 pm
Today’s tickers: LRCX, AZN, BRCD, F, MTG, RSH & FL
LRCX – Lam Research Corp. – Contrarian option players initiated bullish trades on Lam Research Corporation today even though shares are trading 7% lower to $32.79. Investors sold nearly 5,000 in-the-money put options at the March $35 strike for an average premium of $1.71 apiece. Put-sellers are perhaps positioning for a rebound in the price of the underlying stock ahead of expiration next month. Traders keep the $1.71 premium per contract on the sale only if LRCX’s shares rally above $35.00 by expiration day. Short-put sellers receive the premium in exchange for bearing the risk that the puts land in-the-money at expiration and shares of the underlying stock are put to them at an effective price of $33.29 apiece. Optimism spread to the April $35 strike where 1,000 calls were picked up for an average premium of $1.15 apiece. Lam Research’s shares must jump 10.25% from the current value before call-buyers start to accumulate profits above the breakeven share price of $36.15. The increase in demand for options on LRCX today boosted options implied volatility on the stock about 11.1% to 37.54%.
AZN – AstraZeneca PLC – A bearish risk reversal was initiated on pharmaceuticals firm, AstraZeneca, today despite news the firm is raising its 2010 earnings outlook to $5.90-$6.30 per share up from $5.75-$6.15 per share. AstraZeneca improved its 2010 outlook after revealing plans to pay $783 million to settle a tax dispute with United Kingdom regulators. Shares were up earlier in the session, but are currently trading lower by less than 0.10% to $43.51. The pessimistic play involved the sale of 5,000 calls at the July $50 strike for a premium of $0.60 apiece, spread against the purchase of 5,000 puts at the lower July $40 strike for a premium of $1.35 each. The net cost of the reversal transaction amounts to $0.75 per contract. The investor responsible for the trade is perhaps hoping to accumulate profits to the downside should the stock trade beneath the breakeven share price of $39.25 by expiration in July.
BRCD – Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. – The supplier of networking equipment forecast maximum 2010 earnings of $0.58 per share, which underwhelmed analysts expecting $0.60 per share. A plethora of analyst downgrades combined with the lower-than-expected 2010 profit forecast pummeled Brocade’s share price down 23.50% to $5.32 today. BRCD was downgraded to ‘hold’…
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Two Week Wrap-Up – Trading Our Range
by phil - December 6th, 2009 7:58 am
Your "crystal ball" was dead-on with the insights into the report on jobs as well as the initial rise and then correction. Truly impressive. – Champstar2
We didn't have a weekly wrap-up last week because of the holiday.
In our Nov 21st Wrap-Up, I had said next week we’ll be watching to see if we can get more bullish above our 25% lines at: Dow 10,250, S&P 1,100, Nasdaq 2,187, NYSE 7,000 and Russell 600 and that became the bottom of our new range while I sent out a 9:41 Alert to our Members on Nov 23rd sticking with our upside targets of Dow 10,471, S&P 1,113, Nas 2,205, NYSE 7,266 and Russell 605. That has been a very reliable range to play for the past two weeks and we've been having a good time playing both ends of it.
Rather than just wrapping up this week's moves, I thought we'd add the prior week as the pattern is very much the same (and it was the same the week before) so it certainly bears (oops, don't say bears!) studying. Of course, when I talk about patterns, I don't just mean the chart pattern where we have all of our gains for the week on Monday and Tuesday on low volume and then larger volume selling for the rest of the week as the funds who pump the futures up dump their ill-gotten gains on retail investors. I'm talking about the global new patterns, as reported by the MSM, that make this sort of manipulation so effective. It's not that I'm so good at predicting things – it's really just that I'm good at spotting the BS…
Monday - Stuffing the Futures for Thanksgiving
I was pointing out that morning that 90% of the market gains since October had been coming on a single day each week and how a lot of that was happening in the very thinly-traded Futures market, where a few thousand shares traded overnight are able to lever the entire US market up by Trillions of Dollars. It's a very sick and broken system that has been seized by manipulators to yank investors around, making sure retail investors have little ability to participate in these wild market moves as the game is already over by the time trading starts the next…
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Weak Weekly Wrap-Up
by phil - November 21st, 2009 8:26 am
This chart says it all (thanks Jesse).
In last week's wrap-up I said: "Since early September our upside targets for the indexes have been: Dow 10,087, S&P 1,096, Nasdaq 2,173, NYSE 7,204 and Russell 623 and nothing has happened to change our fundamental outlook for the better so the closer we get to those levels, the LESS comfortable we are taking bullish positions." I mentioned how tempting it had been to cash out all our longs and go 100% bearish when we hit 10,300. Our downside levels told us to wait until the 16th, when Monday's move up was finally the last straw and we are out of the bull game (our last major Buy List was July 11th and most picks are up over 100%), probably for the rest of the year.
This chart shows you that the S&P is primed for a 5% correction back to 1,050. I don't know why Jesse didn't extend out the lower support line, which would take us right about to my pullback target of S&P 1,000/Dow 9,650. I stuck my neck out on TV two weeks ago, calling for a 10% correction to those levels but we've been playing both sides of the fence until this week, when I finally had to put my foot down on Monday, after having discussed cashing out for the holidays in Member Chat over the weekend. Our general plan this week was to cash out the winners and leave only longer-term, hedged bullish plays while adding more speculative downside plays for the short-term correction.
Why the change of heart? Well, something you don't see on this chart but is pretty clear on the Yahoo monthly view, is that virtually all of the gains (ALL of them if you include the spikes) in the Dow for the ENTIRE month of November have come on single days each week. This week it was Monday (139 points), last week Monday (206 points) and Nov 5th was Wednesday (198 points). Take those days out of the run from our Oct 30th close at 9,712 and we're up just 63 points to 9,975 despite there being only 1 losing day in the first week (11/3, down 16 points) of the month and one losing day in the second (Nov 12th, down 92 points). That is one super-flimsy way to build a "rally" don't you think?
Getting 90%…
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Brocade Options Hyperactive
by Option Review - October 8th, 2009 4:34 pm
Today’s tickers: BRCD, WYN, CAR, TGT, CBST & KMB
BRCD - Shares of the telecommunications equipment provider continue to rally today. The stock gained more than 6.5% during the session and reached a new 52-week high of $9.65. The BRCD ticker symbol catapulted to the top of our ‘most active by options volume’ market scanner as investors exchanged more than 235,000 option contracts on the stock by lunchtime. It appears one investor executed a massive bull call spread in the November contract. The transaction involved the purchased of about 65,000 calls at the November 12 strike for an average premium of 37 cents each, spread against the sale of approximately 65,000 calls at the higher November 13 strike for 20 pennies apiece. The net cost of the trade amounts to 17 cents per contract for an approximate total price tag of $1,105,000. The investor stands to make 83 cents per contract for maximum potential profits of $5,395,000 if shares of BRCD rise 35% to $13.00 by expiration in November. – Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. –
WYN - Shares at the hotelier broke nicely to the upside earlier in the week and stand 3% ahead of a congestion zone at $18.00. Yesterday Goldman Sachs raised the stakes with an upgrade and a 12-month price forecast of $26 per share. With earnings scheduled for October 28, it appears that one investor has used a call option combination to target a move higher in WYN today. Option implied volatility remains high at 67% but is not rising as the shares surge. There was an outright buyer of 15,000 November 22.50 strike calls purchased for 45 cents, while the 20/25 call spread traded about 9,000 times at a net of 75 cents. To break even the share price needs to accelerate by a further 15% to $20.75 ahead of expiration. – Wyndham Worldwide –
CAR - The global car rental company’s share price contracted 4.5% this morning to $11.93 after firm announced the pricing of its offering of $300 million of 3.50% convertible senior notes due 2014. Despite the decline in shares, one investor utilized options in the January 2010 contract to take a bullish stance on the stock. It appears the trader financed the purchase of a call spread by selling out-of-the-money put options. The three-legged transaction involved the sale of 2,200 puts at the January 10 strike for 1.15 apiece, spread against the purchase…
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Railroad Bulls Expect CSX Recovery on Track
by Option Review - October 5th, 2009 4:11 pm
Today’s tickers: CSX, VALE, ERTS, JNPR, BRCD & ORCL
CSX - The supplier of rail-based transportation services attracted option optimists to the November contract today amid a 2.5% rally in shares to $42.68. Bullishness was expressed through put selling as investors appear to expect CSX to continue to thrive through expiration in November. Approximately 7,300 puts were sold short at the November 40 strike for an average premium of 2.03 apiece. Traders selling these contracts retain the full credit as long as shares of CSX remain higher than $40.00 through expiration next month. Investors shorting the puts pocket the 2.03 credit in exchange for bearing the risk that shares decline beneath $40.00. If the puts land in-the-money by expiration, traders short the puts will have shares of the underlying stock put to them at price of $40.00 apiece. Therefore, losses begin to accumulate if shares fall 11% from the current price and breach the breakeven point to the downside at $37.97. – CSX Corp. –
VALE - Investors in the Brazilian metals and mining company enjoyed a more than 3% rally in shares to $23.63. The current share price represents a new 52-week high for the stock, which is one nickel greater than the previous 52-week high of $23.58, attained back on September 23, 2009. We observed bullish sentiment in the November contract where one investor established a risk reversal by shorting puts to finance the purchase of calls. The optimistic play involved the sale of 8,000 puts at the November 21 strike for a premium of 60 cents apiece, spread against the purchase of 8,000 calls at the higher November 25 strike for an average premium of 71 cents per contract. The net cost of assuming a long call position amounts to 11 pennies apiece. Shares of Vale must rise another 6% by expiration for the investor to begin to accumulate profits above the breakeven point at $25.11. – Vale SA –
ERTS - Shares at the game-maker are higher by 3% at $18.89 today making the options action a little curious. An investor appears to be writing nearby in-the-money puts in exchange for buying those at out-of-the-money strikes at later expiries. An investor sold 13,700 November puts at the 19 strike for a 1.50 premium, meaning he’d have shares put to him if they remain below the strike in seven weeks time. In the meantime he insures worried ERTS traders…
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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 site