McKesson Calls Active Ahead of Earnings After the Bell
by Option Review - January 31st, 2011 4:47 pm
Today’s tickers: MCK, SWY, EXM & CVLT
MCK - McKesson Corp. – Bulls are buying up call options on the drug and medical supplies distribution company today ahead of the firm’s third-quarter earnings report after the final bell. Shares in McKesson are currently up 0.50% to stand at $74.52 as of 12:25pm in New York. More than 5,800 calls have changed hands at the February $75 strike on paltry previously existing open interest of just 819 contracts at that strike. Investors taking bullish positions on McKesson ahead of earnings purchased more than 5,000 of the calls for an average premium of $1.45 per contract. Call buyers stand ready to make money should shares in the name rally another 2.6% to surpass the average breakeven price of $76.45 by February expiration. McKesson Corp.’s shares, which rallied up to $75.49 last week, have not traded this high since 1999. Options implied volatility on McKesson is up 13% at 26.23% in early afternoon trade ahead of earnings this evening.
SWY - Safeway Inc. – Activity in near-term put options on the food and drug retailer today suggests some investors expect shares in Safeway to rebound ahead of February expiration. Shares are up 1.25% at $20.77 just before 12:45pm in New York, but are down roughly 13.45% since November 5, 2010. Safeway will reveal its performance for the fourth quarter before the opening bell tolls on February 24, 2011. Bullish players appear to have sold the majority of the 18,500 puts that have changed hands at the February $20 strike on open interest of 1,595 contracts for an average premium of $0.20 each. Put sellers keep the full premium received on the sale as long as shares in Safeway exceed $20.00 through expiration day next month. More than 3,750 in-the-money put options changed hands at the higher February $23 strike on previously existing open interest of just 6 contracts. It looks like nearly 2,000 of the put options sold for an average premium of $2.57 a-pop. Investors selling the puts…
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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…
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Thrill-Ride Thursday, Finally Some Earnings!
by phil - July 9th, 2009 7:24 am
Wheee, what a day yesterday!
Of course we hit it out of the ballpark with our ICE puts as that stock melted so fast it turned to vapors (or at least the calls did!). Fortunately, we had the puts and the Aug $95 puts I mentioned in the morning post, that we had taken at $6.20 on Tuesday, opened at $8.50 and ran up to $14.35 (up 131%) at the day's end – all without a significant pullback to stop us out. Since we LOVE to go back to a well that's paying off, we jumped on the Aug $90 puts for $3 as our first trade of the day at 9:39 and those finished the day at $7.35 (up 145%), not bad for our 3rd play on the same stock in 48 hours!
The best thing about having 100%+ put side winners in a downturn is it gives us free reign to speculate on the upside. Since we had a bottomish view of the downturn yesterday, we were able to use the cushion provided by the gains on ICE (as well as our longer-term DIA and USO short positions) to establish a bunch of speculative upside positions on stocks we thought were bottoming. The key to this strategy is position sizing and virtual portfolio management. If you invest, for example, $2,000 per position and are willing to take 20% losses as a stop-out, then having a 100% winner on ICE (and we had 3!) allows you to take 5 bullish position as the total risk on $10,000 is the $2,000 you gained on the bear side. We don't just mindlessly flip-flop of course. In fact, it's been more than a month since we picked up bullish positions for more than a quick trade and we're not SURE these are going to work but, since we had the winning put plays, it's a good place to make a stand – dipping our toes in the bullish waters once again.
I mentioned our brand-new $5,000 Virtual Portfolio yesterday and our first play was a net .71 spread on AA where we bought the $7.50 calls for $1.75 and sold the $9 calls for $1.04. On yesterday's dip, we had the opportunity to take out the $9 calls for .70, which was a .35 profit and left us with the naked $7.50 calls at net $1.40, with a break-even at…
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Wild Weekly Wrap-Up
by phil - May 31st, 2009 8:29 am
What a wild week that was!
We got such a good sell-off last Friday that we went 1/2 covered into the weekend on our DIA puts (a little bearish) but we had already cleaned up on quick short plays on the Dow and USO and we were very much in cash but still making bullish plays at the time. I did a 3-part series on dividend-paying stocks over the weekend, elaborating on the 21 dividend payers we picked that Tuesday along with our $104,340 Virtual Portfolio (used to be $100,000) so we had no shortage of bullish ideas but it didn't take us long this week to turn pretty bearish.
Last Friday morning (22nd), ahead of the holiday weekend, with the Dow at 8,323, I sent out an early alert to members saying: "I’d go long on the Dow here but frankly I’m just not in the mood today. Still full covered on long DIA puts and still in the DDMs but just hanging out and watching today since you can’t take the action seriously anyway." Our plays that day ran the gamut: We sold BAC July $10 puts for $1 (now .66), took a TBT spread that has been a wild ride but right back where we started and an ICE bull call spread ($90/$100, selling $90 puts $2.33, now .57) that is right on track. All that came before 11:33 on Friday, where I rightly called a top at 8,342. We made nice profits on DIA puts and took an EXM and T hedges that are doing well. One of our best plays on Friday was the USO $32 puts at .80 we took into the weekend, those cashed out Monday morning at $1.05 (up 44%) – those USO trades were followed through in detail in our Members Only post: "Stupid Options Tricks - The Salvage Play."
As I mentioned, we have been mainly in cash for over 2 weeks now so mainly we're just taking small opportunities and having fun while we wait for the market to break one way or the other. One article I wrote over the holiday weekend was a timely update to "How To Vacation-Proof Your Virtual Portfolio," something anyone not in cash needs to take under strong advisement and DO NOT miss the very generous free video lesson from Sage's Market…
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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