Nov 11, 2011
Option Block 105: A Pod of Sissy girls
Trading Block: How to use SPX movement in the downside skew to gauge the sentiment of a particular rally. An uncharacteristic sell-off in Apple -- will they finally lose their grip on the 400 handle? Green Mountain Coffee closed at nearly $41 today, down a whopping 40%.
Odd Block: Unusual activity in eBay Inc. (EBAY): A Bullish option strategist appears in online marketplace provider EBAY this morning with the purchase of the January 30-34 call spread for $2.04 on 5,600 by 8,400 ratio and the simultaneous sale of 8,400 January 27 Puts at $1.03. EBAY is slated to release their Q4 earnings on January 18th, two days before these contracts expire.
Computer Science Corp. (CSC): A provider of information technology services to government and industry, saw its shares trading lower again today after yesterday’s disappointing 2012 profit forecast. The shares lost 15% yesterday and have drifted down so far this morning. Investors positioning for the stock to continue to decline picked up deep out-of-the-money November and December expiry puts that look for the price of the underlying to suffer additional double-digit declines in the near future. Bears populating the front month picked up more than 700 puts at the Nov. $25 strike for an average premium of $0.58 each, and purchased some 400 put options at the lower Nov. $22.5 strike at an average premium of $0.15 a-pop. The stock was cut to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan today.
Xpress Block: Tim Navabi takes the reins at discusses the reverse split of FAS at OX today and talks adjusted options.
Around the Block: Disney earnings after the bell - Things are looking good in the house of Mouse, it closed at 34.60, trading about $1 higher in the after-hours. NVDIA after the bell - closed at about 14.5, trading about $0.70 higher. Under Armor, Mastercard, Red Hat and Ulta Salon all had nice small pops before earnings. Oil and TLT have both been on a significant rally.