Lowe’s Weeklies Active As Shares Tumble
by Option Review - May 21st, 2012 3:01 pm
Today’s tickers: LOW, CBE & AIG
LOW - Lowe’s Companies, Inc. – Shares in Lowe’s were hammered Monday after the home improvement retailer lowered its full-year earnings forecast and reported a smaller-than-expected increase in same-store sales. The stock is currently down 9.7% at $25.72 as of 12:30 p.m. ET following the company’s first-quarter earnings report this morning. Options activity in the front month is mixed, with some traders positioning for the stock to rebound, while others brace for further downside in the near term. Strategists constructing positions that benefit from a recovery in the shares homed in on the June $27 strike call, trading upwards of 5,800 contracts versus open interest of 18 positions. It looks like most of the calls were purchased for an average premium of $0.45 apiece, thus positioning longs to profit should LOW’s shares rally 6.7% to top $27.45 by June expiration. Meanwhile, put buying at the June $25 strike points to near-term bearish sentiment on the stock. Traders exchanged more than 2,300 of the $25 strike put options, purchasing most of the volume at an average premium of $0.65 each. The strategy may be profitable at expiration next month should Lowe’s shares decline another 5.3% to breach the average breakeven price of $24.35. Options volume of 30,715 on the second-largest U.S. home improvement retailer this afternoon today runs at twice the 90-day average options volume for the name.
CBE - Cooper Industries PLC – Shares in the Maynooth, Ireland-based maker of electrical products and tools rallied nearly 30.0% to a record-high of $71.73 today after diversified power management company, Eaton Corp., agreed to buy Cooper Industries in a cash and stock deal valued at $11.8 billion. Options on Cooper are more active than usual with just fewer than 800 contracts in play as of 1:00 p.m. ET versus the 90-day average options volume on the stock of 91 contracts. Open interest in July expiry call options on CBE suggests one…
Thrilling Thursday – Comedy or Tragedy?
by phil - January 6th, 2011 7:29 am
Russell 8-0-0, Russell 8-0-0! Wherefore art thou Russell8-0-0? Deny thy dollar and refuse to fall, or, if thou spike not, be but consolidating at resistance and I’ll happily Capitulate….
If it's good enough for fair Juliet, it's going to have to be good enough for us as the Russell finally makes it over our 800 target – the last barrier that was keeping us on the bearish side. Above these lines – it's time to stop worrying and love the rally as we romanticize the deadly combination of QE2 the Obama tax cuts as: "A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parents’ strife."
Of course Willie Shakespeare has nothing on Jimmy Cramer, who's pearls of wisdom are also sure to be repeated centuries from now. Last night the Bard of Wall Street sang a veritable sonnet in praise of the stock market and foretold a tale of woe for anyone dumb enough to take profits into this rally:
We got the correction this morning, Dow fell 35 points… Today's action was proof positive that you need to stop worrying and learn to love corrections… What scares me, and what should scare you, is that if you sell your stocks here, you won't be able to get back in. You should be worried about stocks getting away from you, because I think we can be on the verge of something big – something very positive. FORGET the fact that stocks have run up a lot in the last 6 months. For more than 10 years, this market has done nothing, THAT is the most important frame of reference…
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What's changed? We are finally starting to see big breakouts from a slew of breakouts from several large cap companies including: CAT, UTX, FCX, SWK, CBE, ETN, CSX, UNP and so many other big industrials. Ladies and gentlemen, we have waited over a decade for this move and what do people want to do now that it has arrived? They want to sell! That's right, they want to sell. That's right. They want to dump the stocks (sell button sound effect) because they are up