Options Strategists Take the Wheel at Ford Motor Co.
by Option Review - December 21st, 2010 4:10 pm
Today’s tickers: F, NKE, TSRA, PCX, STI, CSCO & SNDK
F - Ford Motor Co. – A couple of large-volume spreads initiated in longer-dated call and put options on the automaker caught our eye this afternoon. Shares in Ford Motor Company increased 0.90% this afternoon to stand at $17.00 in the final minutes of the trading day. It looks like one bullish player employed the use of a debit call spread in the April 2011 contract while a more cautious investor utilized a ratio put spread expiring in June of 2011. The options optimist picked up 10,000 calls at the April 2011 $17 strike for a premium of $1.25 each, and sold the same number of calls at the higher April 2011 $20 strike at a premium of $0.29 apiece, in order to position for continued bullish movement in the price of the car manufacturer’s shares. The trader paid a net premium of $0.96 per contract for the spread, and is positioned to make money should Ford’s shares rally another 5.6% over the current price of $17.00 to exceed the effective breakeven point at $17.96 by expiration day in April. Maximum potential profits of $2.04 per contract are available to the call-spreader if Ford’s shares jump 17.6% to first surpass the current 52-week high of $17.42 on the stock, and ultimately trade above $20.00 ahead of expiration. Further along in the June 2011 contract, another strategist dabbled in put options, perhaps as a way to hedge a long position in the underlying shares through the first half of 2011, or alternatively to bet on a pullback in Ford’s shares. It looks like the investor picked up 12,500 puts at the June $17 strike at a premium of $1.63 each, and sold 25,000 puts at the lower June 2011 $14 strike for a premium of $0.54 a-pop. The trader paid a net $0.55 per contract for the ratio spread and starts making money if Ford’s shares slip beneath the effective breakeven price of $16.45 ahead of June expiration. The investor may walk away with maximum potential profits of $2.45 per contract in the event that the automaker’s shares plunge 17.6% to settle at $14.00 at expiration day. Selling twice…
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Wonderful Weekly Wrap-Up
by phil - June 12th, 2010 8:28 am
I love it when a plan comes together!
Last week, I felt like I was going to have to call Animal Control to help me fight off the bears. As I mentioned in last week's Wrap-Up, all 14 misses (out of 55 trade ideas for the week) we had were bullish plays that we were grabbing on the way down. On Friday we went bullish on USO, SSO, DIA, TBT (well, we're always bullish on TBT), AET, ABX, Copper Futures and even poor BP. Those followed up on bullish plays we had taken on Thursday on TSRA, USO, MEE, FCX, EEM, ERX and XOM. We went into the weekend still bearish but we were excited about flipping back to bullish. My closing comment in the Wrap-Up was: " I’m hoping for a blow-off spike down on Monday with heavy volume, hopefully followed by a recovery over the next few days" and, gosh darn it, wouldn't you know that's EXACTLY what we got.
I don't MAKE the markets do these things, I simply tell you what is going to happen and how you can make money on it… Needless to say, we had a LOT of fun this week at PSW! Last weekend, however, was such a bearish frenzy in the MSM that it was making our Members nervous and THAT I do not tolerate so I wrote : "The Worst-Case Scenario: Getting Real With Global GDP!" to illustrate why I felt our bottoms would hold and I began a Top 20 Buy List on Sunday and boy did we get some fabulous entries this week!
Monday Market Movement – Will We Survive?
As I said on Monday Morning: "I already stuck my neck out calling a bottom so now we're just waiting patiently." We were disappointed to have not gotten a stronger statement from the G20 over the weekend but it was just the Finance Ministers, so we weren't expecting too much until the big boys meet at the end of the month. While we were in a buying mood, I cautioned against getting too bullish until we took back our anticipated "weak bounce" levels, which were the orange lines on Monday's Multi-Chart:
I pointed out (on another Multi-Chart) that Europe was already gathering strength so we were pretty confident things would go our way but, as I said in the …
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Fast and Furious Four-Day Wrap-Up
by phil - June 5th, 2010 7:12 am
Wheeeee, what a ride!
Like any good car race, the lead changes often in the markets. Yesterday the bears took the lead as the combination of Hungarian debt issues and a disappointing jobs number were like a tire blow-out for the bulls, who were forced to pull in for a pit stop. Fortunately, we had our seat belts on and had assumed the crash position as I had warned Members on THURSDAY Morning at 10:04:
Watch that 666 line on the RUT – we don’t want to lose that or even show weakness there… ISM a bit disappointing, now we’ll see what holds but I’m out of short-term, unhedged, upside plays here.
I felt strongly enough about it that we also posted it on Seeking Alpha, to warn as many people as possible, under the heading: "Phil Calls Short-Term Top." I don’t post live trade ideas on Seeking Alpha but in Premium Member Chat (and you can subscribe here) I followed right up at 10:17 Thursday morning with the following trade idea:
BGZ (large-cap bear) is at $15.27 and I like them as a hedge here with the (June) $14/16 bull call spread at .75, selling the July $14 puts for .95 and that’s a net .20 credit on the $2 spread with about $2.70 in margin so you can do a 10 contract spread for a $200 credit and $2,700 in margin (according to TOS standard) with a $2K upside if the market even twitches lower. Worst case is you own BGZ as a hedge to a dip below Dow 10,600 (your put-to area) at net $13.80 (9% lower than current price).
That’s what hedged trade ideas look like in our Member Chat. At PSW, you need to put some time in LEARNING how to trade and, more importantly, how to hedge. This is a fairly complicated options play but we take it BECAUSE IT WORKS! There are many, many simpler ways to play that don’t work (or carry far more risk) but we prefer to teach our Members how to do the things that do work. As it stands, just 48 hours later, BGZ is up 10% on Friday to $16.89 (so the spread is now 100% in the money) and June $14/16 bull call spread is now $1.50 while the July $14 puts are Down to .60 so net .90 already on the spread that already paid…
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Frightening Friday – Halloween Edition!
by phil - October 30th, 2009 8:30 am
Wheee what a day!
Who said we placed a spread bet on the Dow moving 200 points one way or another in yesterday's morning post? Me, that's who. And how much did the Dow move yesterday? 199.89 points. OK, so I was wrong by .11 but our plays worked out just fine and we flipped bearish again as we flew up and we'll see if my streak continues this week. We would have gone more aggressivley bearish but we were worried about end of the month (and end of the year for many hedge funds) window dressing that would keep things going for one more day.
Everything went according to plan and we got the bounces we were looking for but the RUT failed to retake 589, which was our canary in the coal mine's breakdown level from last week. As I alerted members at 12:15, that and the Qs failing to hold 42 into the close, which failed to confirm the Nas move over our 2,088 watch level. We have our DIA puts, we have our SRS longs, we have our DXD longs (which are half price as our DDMs paid off yesterday) and we shorted SPG into the close as Cap noted they had a ridiculous run-up ahead of today's earnings.
As I said to members in the afternoon, my gut said to go more bearish but we allowed ourselves to be spooked by Mr Stick in the afternoon and ended up about 55% bearish with a 1/2 cover of our long DIA puts but we already made a quick 20% on the sale of short puts in the morning so it's a position we had a little slack in going into the close. Our logic is, even if we have another up day today, we're still going to want some pretty serious coverage into the weekend unless the Russell and the Qs can confirm this move up today.
Bulls should be spooked by the fact that a blow-out GDP report, showing an economy with a HUGE turnaround and the President crowing on TV about how great things are going could ONLY erase 1/2 the losses we suffered since last week. Another market move I hit on the head yesterday was my prediction that, after 3 consecutive 1.8% down days in a row, the Hang Seng would jump…
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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.