Options Player Harvests Premium, Sells Ralph Lauren Corp. Calls
by Option Review - September 14th, 2011 2:13 pm
Today’s tickers: RL, OSK, SPLS & RAX
RL - Ralph Lauren Corp. – The designer of premium-brand lifestyle products ranging from men’s and women’s fashion to fragrances and home furnishings popped up on our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after one investor traded a large chunk of deep out-of-the-money October contract call options. Shares in Ralph Lauren Corp. fell 2.0% earlier in the session to $135.69, but recovered in early-afternoon trade to stand roughly flat on the session at $138.82 as of 12:20 pm ET. The stock currently trades a few dollars below its July 21 all-time high of $141.37. The strategist responsible for nearly all of the options volume on Ralph Lauren today appears to be taking the view that the price of the underlying shares are unlikely to soar above $155.00 within the next five weeks to October expiration. More than 9,900 call options changed hands at the October $155 strike against paltry previously existing open interest of just 372 contracts. One block of 9,075 of those calls were sold by one investor at a premium of $1.70 a-pop within the first hour of the trading session. The trader selling the calls keeps the full amount of premium received on the transaction as long as shares in Ralph Lauren fail to exceed $155.00 come expiration day. The investor may be selling the calls outright, or could be writing the options against an existing long position in the underlying shares. In the naked short scenario, the strategist may accrue losses on the position in the event that RL’s shares jump 12.9% over the current price of $138.82 to surpass the effective breakeven price of $156.70. Options implied volatility on the stock dropped 5.05% this afternoon to 46.3%. Ralph Lauren reports second-quarter earnings on November 9, 2011, well after October options expiration.…
Meaty With a Chance of Cloud Calls
by ilene - September 8th, 2010 11:17 pm
Meaty With a Chance of Cloud Calls
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
And the winner is…Cloud! The tech industry sub-sector with perhaps this year’s meatiest move is undoubtedly cloud computing. Names like Riverbed ($RVBD), Akamai ($AKAM) and 3Par ($PAR) have all been putting up insane numbers this year, performance-wise.
My awakening to the group’s potential back in January came courtesy of a kickass cover story in Barron’s (Sky’s The Limit)- ever since then the cloud computing stocks mentioned (and some that were omitted) have been nothing but fire – in a market that is unchanged year-to-date.
Here’s a peek at the majesty that is Cloud Stock-age thus far in the Twentyten:
Regular readers know that I’ve been hammering away at the cloud theme all year, even hoping for the advent of a Cloud Computing ETF at one point this past spring, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way (we still haven’t gotten one).
What’s next for the group?
* I have a hard time believing that Cisco has much interest in trailing behind Riverbed in market share for very much longer. Riverbed’s Steelhead product suite speeds up transmission of applications and data from the cloud to the end user, this is a corporate IT Holy Grail as it allows for the efficient decentralization that global entities need. I could see Cisco or one of its rivals making a move for this name as this would give them the number one offering in this crucial space instantly.
* Akamai’s global "private web" video serving solution will probably continue to be the delivery method of choice as Web TV becomes a reality and online streaming continues to be monetized. The wake up call for me on Akamai was when I learned that it was their technology that was the backbone for NBC’s serving of Winter Olympics video to everyone’s mobile devices.
* The bidding war over 3Par (between Dell and H-P) kinda gilds Rackspace’s ($RAX) lilly a bit when you think about it. Rackspace took over an abandoned shopping mall in downtown San Antonio and built an amazingly scaled-up cloud hosting center. Their fanatical reputation for customer service to their cloud hosted customers is the heart of their story, however – anyone can build a server farm.
* Microsoft’s CEO Ballmer said a few months ago that he was "betting…