Love Letters (Weekend Reading on Valentine’s Day)
by phil - February 14th, 2010 8:25 am
Happy Valentine's Day!
Last Valentine's Day was as Saturday, following a frightening Friday the 13th, where we had fallen through the 8,000 line on the Dow. I wrote a very interesting post that morning discussing how I came about my political views, which is good for new Members to check out. We also flipped short that day on SKF, too early at $130 but that ended well as we kept after them and it was our biggest bet by March 6th, which eventually returned over 1,000%. We also stopped shorting GOOG at $350 (it did keep going to $300 but the upside was nice too). I closed the morning post with:
For us, it’s all about the levels as we try to remain unbiased as investors, no matter how voraciously we defend our political views. Dow 7,800, S&P 820, Nas 1,460, NYSE 5,100, Russell 437 and SOX 203 all better continue to hold today but, even if they do, we’re nowhere near where we want to be and we’re going to take some bearish covers into the weekend – just in case. So whether you are a witch celebrating the horrors of the 13th or waiting for a rose from your true love the next day, remember to be careful out there – we are certainly still deep, deep in the woods!
That Tuesday (Monday was President's day) we fell 300 points and another 300 points by the end of the week! That was a fitting way to mark the 80th anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre when Al Capone’s "South Side" gang, dressed as cops, rousted a garage run by Bugs Moran’s "North Side" gang and had them stand against the wall and then executed all 7 men. They shot them 70 times with machine guns and made their escape by using the Capone men dressed as cops to "arrest" the other Capone men and drive them away from the scene in broad daylight. Now that's what I call a good plan!
Here's a great chart that summarizes our year to date. Someone else found this, I wish I knew how to use StockCharts this well, they have tons of good things in there:
It's a bit worrying that XLU is doing so poorly – so much for diversification keeping you safe… It's going…
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Earthlink calendar spreader maintains pessimistic stance
by Option Review - March 16th, 2009 5:41 pm
Today’s tickers: ELNK, HBC, CECO, XLE, C, CMCSK, SWKS & ARNA
ELNK Earthlink , Inc. – The internet service provider has experienced a 5% decline in shares today to $6.29. ELNK popped onto our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after one investor initiated a calendar roll. At the March 7.5 strike price 5,200 puts were sold for a premium of 95 cents each, while at the April 7.5 strike price 5,200 puts were purchased for 1.15 per contract. Maybe this investor sees Earthlink continuing to fall through next month, and therefore has rolled his in-the-money long-put position previously established in March into the next month’s contract.
HBC HSBC Holdings Plc ADS – As with many other financials today, shares of HBC have rallied 4% to $27.05. One trade of interest occurred at the March 30 strike price where an investor appears to have purchased a straddle by picking up 7,500 calls for 15 cents apiece and 7,500 puts for 3.20 per contract. You may be thinking, given where shares are with today’s rally – why on earth would someone pay a combined premium of 3.35 in the hope that shares of the bank swing to either breakeven point located at $33.35 on the upside and at $26.65 on the downside? While it is possible that this investor’s motivation for the trade is to see profits amass on falling share price, we believe there may be a different explanation. Perhaps this trader had previously sold the options leaving him short and now he is buying back the contracts in order to close out his short position. It appears that about 7,500 of the existing open interest for calls and puts at the March 30 strike was built up between February 5th and 6th. Thus, we propose that this investor may have originally sold the straddle in February and is not buying it back before the March contract expires on Friday.
CECO Career Education Corporation – Shares of the global education company have fallen 12% to $20.24. CECO is an on-ground provider of education at various levels and also has a significant presence in online education. The company edged onto our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after one investor established plays in the March and April contracts. At the March 22.5 strike price it appears that one investor initiated a credit spread by purchasing 5,000 calls for 38 cents apiece…
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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.