Visa Calls Fly Off The Shelves As Shares Hit Fresh 52-Week Peak
by Option Review - September 20th, 2011 2:17 pm
Today’s tickers: V, CLGX, JEF & TEVA
V - Visa, Inc. – Volume in Visa call options jumped straight out of the gate this morning, with shares in the electronic payments company now trading 5.2% higher on the day at a new 52-week high of $94.75 as of 12:55 pm ET. The company said Monday it has partnered with Internet search giant, Google, to allow Visa account-holders to pay for store purchases with Android smartphones. Activity in call options that expire at the end of the week suggest some traders are positioning for the price of Visa’s shares to extend gains through Friday. Investors picked up in- and out-of-the-money calls in the Sept. ’23 weeklies, but focused their efforts most aggressively at the Sept. $95 call, driving volume at that strike up past 11,500 contracts. The majority of the Sept. $95 strike calls appear to have been purchased for an average premium of $0.46 each. Call buyers profit at expiration this week if shares in Visa exceed the average breakeven price of $95.46. Bullish bias in the weeklies spread to the Sept. $97.5 strike where investors paid an average premium of $0.22 apiece for more than 650 calls.
Longer-dated October contract call options are also popular on Visa this afternoon as traders position for fresh 52-week highs in the weeks ahead. Buyers out-transacted sellers in the Oct. $92.5 and $95 strike call, while mixed trading was seen in the higher Oct. $100 strike call option. Fresh prints in the Oct. $105 strike call are notable as upwards of 2,500 calls changed hands at that strike against previously existing open interest of just 3 contracts. It looks like most of these contracts were purchased for an average premium of $0.25 a-pop. Investors long the Oct. $105 strike call profit at…
Crowd Forms Around CoreLogic Call Options
by Option Review - August 30th, 2011 3:08 pm
Today’s tickers: CLGX, XLY, JDSU & FNF
CLGX - CoreLogic, Inc. – Options volume on the provider of business support services has ballooned to more than twice the number of existing positions on the stock, with calls changing hands more than 20 times for each single put option in action. The spike in demand for calls is no surprise given the 28.6% rally in CoreLogic’s shares to $11.30 today, on news the company hired Greenhill & Co. to help it consider various options that could include putting itself up for sale. Increased activity in CLGX options sent implied volatility on the stock screaming higher to 66.48%, a 79.3% gain over yesterday’s close. Much of the nearer-term positioning in CoreLogic call options today appears to be the work of bullish investors expecting the price of the underlying to continue higher. But, open interest patterns in the calls suggest not all players acted after news of Greenhill & Co.’s hire hit the stands. It looks like some traders picked up 445 of the October $10 and 550 of the Jan. 2012 $10 strike call options yesterday for an average premium of $0.14 and $0.40 apiece, respectively. The values of these positions no doubt exploded overnight, with buyers of these options now paying around $1.53 and $1.64 for the right to purchase shares in CLGX at $10.00 come expiration day in October and January 2012. Although overnight success stories such as these tend to raise an eyebrow or two, there is no evidence as yet to indicate call buyers knew what was coming to them today.
Meanwhile, new bullish stances were initiated on the stock across all available expiries. Call buyers took to the $10 and $12.5 strikes expiring in September and October to presumably get in on the way up. Sizable…