Monday Market Movement – Pattern Recognition
by phil - November 2nd, 2009 8:24 am
Here’s a scary chart pattern for you from our Chart School:
Elliot Wave Trends points out that the S&P has fallen into a fractal patten that may be repeating the behavior of the great drop of ’08, right here, right now. Of course patterns do SEEM to repeat themselves all the time – until they don’t – but it will be interesting this week and next to see if we follow-through with a flatline, followed by a drop to 1,000 from which we falsely back to 1,050 and then plunge to our doom as Santa foresakes us and we run all the way back down to our lows.
That’s where they lose me. Charts are fun and all but I see no basis for going back to our lows as our lows were ridiculous and caused by panic-selling in a doomsday scenario. Hard to imagine things will fall apart that badly between now and Jan earnings although I do believe we will have a rough time — just not that rough!
Barron’s surveyed Money Managers this weekend and they don’t seem to think things will be rough at all. 52% of those surveyed think there is NO WAY we will have a double dip recession. 76% believe that the decline in corporate profits has ended and 68% believe our GDP wil grow more than 2.5% in Q4 while just 10% believe it is possible for commodity pricing to fall in the next 6 months. You know what they say about when everyone is on the same side of a bet of course!
These are the people we give our money to – the biggest and "brightest" of hedge fund managers who control over $1Tn of assets under management. Favorite stocks in the group are: MSFT, ABT, BAC, BRK.A, CVS, GE, GS, LEG and QCOM. Stocks that are considered overvalued are: AIG, AAPL, GOOG, CAT, AMZN, C, GE, GMCR, VZ and YHOO. Ony 7% think Asian stocks are heading lowed, just 1% less than 8% who feel oil is going down; 92% don’t feel oil will go down.
Everybody likes Tech (just 0.9% think it will be the worst performing sector) and nobody likes the Financials (22.5% think it will be the worst performing sector) followed by Consumer Cyclicals (20.7%) and, oddly, Utilities (15.3%). The sectors picked as the best performers for the next 6-12 months are Tech (18.9%), Energy (17.1%) and Health Care (17.1%). Only…
Bulls singing Yahoo! in tune
by Option Review - April 16th, 2009 5:53 pm
Today’s tickers: YHOO, MMR, FXI, CI, HOG, KFT, NUAN & VMC
YHOO Yahoo!, Inc. – Shares have rallied by more than 2% to $14.32 amid news that the company is seeking buyers for its HotJobs employment website and has plans to cut some 200 to 500 jobs. Perhaps investor confidence has been bolstered by the past few months with CEO Carol Bartz at the helm as the stock has risen about 29% from its January 2009 low of around $11.03 up to today’s price. Option investors were seen taking bullish stances on the stock in the May and October contracts. At the May 15 strike price 26,600 calls were purchased for an average premium of 77 cents apiece. Shares would need to rise by another 10% in order to breach the breakeven point on the trade at $15.77 by expiration in May. Further along, the October 12 strike price witnessed the sale of 2,100 puts for a premium of 1.30 each. Some traders were showing caution in the May contract by purchasing 4,500 puts at the May 14 strike price for 99 cents should shares experience a decline in the near future. These put options would begin to provide downside protection or profits beginning at the breakeven point to the downside at $13.01. Option implied volatility on Yahoo! is up sharply today to 74% from yesterday’s reading of 67%.
MMR McMoRan Exploration Co. – Shares of the oil and natural gas company have declined slightly by less than 1% today to stand at $5.22. Despite the fall in share price, one investor does not see shares falling much further as he sold more than 14,000 puts at the May 5.0 strike price for a premium of 50 cents apiece. There is currently no open interest at the May 5.0 strike, and thus this trader accepts the 50 cent premium in exchange for bearing the risk that shares fall beneath the breakeven point to the downside at $4.50. Should shares plummet through the breakeven point, the investor would face increasing losses in proportion with declines in the stock. The puts traded today represent nearly 40% of the existing open interest on the stock of 38,000 contracts. While we do not know the exact motivation for the trade, we do know that shares need only decline by 13% from the current price for this investor to face losses.
FXI iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25…
Vulcan Materials calendar put spreads predicts continued slide
by Option Review - March 11th, 2009 5:11 pm
Today’s tickers: VMC, ORCL, XLU, XHB, XTO, C, MS, HIG & MT
VMC Vulcan Materials Company – The distributor of construction materials must feel a bit left out given its failure to join in the market rebound festivities. Its shares are flat at $36.35 today, just a scant 5% off the 52-week low of $34.32. Vulcan edged onto our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after one investor established calendar spread positions in the April and May contracts. We reckon that this investor has already established a short position on the shares which have declined by more than 50% since the start of 2009. By selling April puts and buying those at the same strike in May the investor is opening the door to having stock put to him should the price settle in-the-money by expiration in the nearby April contract. By establishing the long May put positions the investor retains his short position, although only via options since the short stock position was already put back to him. The trade employed 3,000 spreads at each of the 30 and 35 strike contracts, which also lowered the full premium paid for the May put options. This provides a longer amount of time for this trader to watch the stock’s movement, yet enables him to lock down profits should exercise occur. The worst case scenario would be if shares were to rebound above $35 in April because this would devalue his short position, although the April puts would expire worthless while the May puts would decrease in value. Optimally, this trader would like to see shares decline below $30 by expiration in April as the value of the long puts in May would greatly increase and the puts in April would allow him to take delivery of the underlying shares.
ORCL – Oracle Corp. – Despite a drop of 1.5% to $14.86 in shares of the software and server manufacturer, option investors spent 75 cents scooping up calls expiring in January at the 20 strike. Some 20,000 contracts changed hands adding to an existing 70,000 of open interest at the strike. While these investor are setting lofty expectations about an ultimate increase of more than one third for Oracle’s shares within nine months, it wouldn’t take that much to shift the premium on the calls. The 0.27 delta indicates gains of around a quarter for each dollar recovery in…