Investors Feed on Darden Restaurants Call and Put Options Ahead of Earnings
by Option Review - December 20th, 2010 4:51 pm
Today’s tickers: DRI, AKS, GRA & GMXR
DRI - Darden Restaurants, Inc. – Options strategists are feasting on near-term call and put options on the operator of eateries such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden ahead of the firm’s second-quarter earnings report, which is scheduled for release before the market opens on Tuesday. Shares in Darden Restaurants rallied as much as 1.6% during the session to touch an intraday high of $50.67. The impending earnings announcement as well as increased demand for options on the stock lifted Darden’s overall reading of options implied volatility 12.0% to 33.20% as of 12:40pm in New York. Investors expecting shares to shatter the current 52-week high of $50.83 by January 2011 expiration scooped up in-the-money call options. It looks like bulls purchased roughly 2,000 now in-the-money calls at the January 2011 $50 strike for an average premium of $1.92 per contract. Call buyers are prepared to profit should shares in Darden Restaurants jump 2.5% over today’s high of $50.67 to surpass the average breakeven price on the calls at $51.92 by January expiration day. Meanwhile, traders wary that shares of the underlying stock may slip following earnings picked up roughly 1,800 puts at the same January 2011 $50 strike for an average premium of $1.76 each. Put buyers at this strike are poised to profit in the event that the restaurant operator’s shares decline 4.8% to trade below the effective breakeven point on the downside at $48.24 by expiration next month.
AKS - AK Steel Holding Corp. – Options activity on the steel producer today suggests one strategist expects shares in AK Steel Holding Corp. to remain range-bound over the next six months to June 2011 expiration. AK Steel’s shares fell as much as 3.4% during the first half of the trading session to touch down at an intraday low of $15.72. The steel maker’s shares rallied sharply at the end of last week, rising 14.3% from Wednesday’s closing price of $14.42 to Friday’s high of $16.48. But, the sale…
Weekend Wrap-Up, Still Trying to Get Bullish
by phil - March 14th, 2010 5:20 am
I’m having writer’s block this weekend.
Usually when I can’t think of what to write it helps me to go over our virtual portfolios so I started this morning reviewing the Buy List but I didn’t get far because it was silly. Of 43 plays on the buy list, 39 are doing well – too well in fact to the point where it’s hard for me, in good conscience, not to say let’s kill the whole thing and get back to cash as we’re up about 20% in 2 months and that’s just ridiculous – most people would call that a good year and go on vacation.
The Buy List was 100% bullish and we did catch a good bottom on our early February entries. I was gung ho bullish then because I felt comfortable that the 10,000 line on the Dow would prevail and that we were good for a run back to the top (10,700), following, more or less, the pattern we had in 2004 (see original post for charts). Well that’s pretty much what’s happened since then but that’s not making me happy because I see no reason we won’t complete that pattern and begin falling off a cliff shortly.
As you all know, I’m not a big fan of TA, or patterns for that matter but the reason I started looking for patterns was to try to get a handle on how long market could really keep going up before falling victim to exhaustion. To me it seemed we weren’t at that point on Feb 6th but now that we’ve put in that big push back up – if we can’t punch up to new highs on all our indexes then I do think it’s time for the markets to take a break.
Clearly I’ve been too bearish for the past couple of weeks and we are now 224 points over 10,400 on the Dow which is where I turned bearish as the January data made me lose faith in our ability to get back to 10,700. I should have stuck to the TA because we’re a lot closer to 10,700 than we are to 10,400. With the Russell and Nasdaq exploding to their own new highs. You can see though, from the above chart, why I do want to wait to see the NYSE, Dow and S&P confirm this move up – it’s not far now!…