Whole Foods Strangled; Enormous Prints in Technology SPDR Put Options
by Andrew Wilkinson - October 7th, 2010 4:40 pm
Today’s tickers: WFMI, XLK, LCC, POT, BMC, TGT & BKE
WFMI - Whole Foods Market, Inc. – Shares of the operator of natural and organic foods supermarkets slipped 2.40% lower this afternoon to $35.31 as of 3:05 pm ET. The stock popped up on our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after one strategist initiated a short strangle in the November contract. It looks like the investor responsible for the trade expects shares in Whole Foods remain range-bound through expiration day next month. The trader sold 5,000 puts at the November $33 strike at a premium of $1.00 each, and shed 5,000 calls at the November $38 strike for premium of $0.92 a-pop. Gross premium pocketed by the strangle-seller amounts to $1.92 per contract. The trader keeps the full premium received as long as WFMI’s shares trade within the boundaries of the strike prices described through expiration. Short stances taken in both call and put options expose the investor to losses, however, should the price of the underlying stock fly upward or fall substantially in the next six weeks. The options strategist starts to lose money if shares rally above the upper breakeven price of $39.92, or should shares trade below the lower breakeven point at $31.08, by expiration day in November.
XLK - Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF – A massive debit put spread utilizing a total of 224,000 contracts on the Technology fund went through electronically this afternoon just after 2:00 pm in New York trading. The spread is perhaps the work of one big options market participant positioning for the price of the underlying shares to slide lower ahead of December expiration. Shares of the XLK, an exchange-traded fund designed to provide investment results that correspond to the price and yield performance of the Technology Select Sector of the S&P 500 Index, edged 0.17% lower to $23.14 by 2:50 pm ET. Companies represented in the Technology Select Sector Index are engaged in industries such as information technology, consulting, semiconductor equipment and products, as…
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Wild Weekly Wrap-Up – The Madness of the Markets (Part 1)
by Phil - May 21st, 2010 11:22 pm
Where do I even begin to go over this week?
I think, to set the proper tone, let’s look at my Thursday morning Alert to Members where I said: "Get out, Get Out, GET OUT of the short-term short-side plays if we get back over the 200 dmas. Take the money and RUN. CASH OUT THE SHORT SIDE. Is that clear? We may not hold these lines but that’s why we have October Disaster Hedges, the shorter-term downside plays are huge winners and should be cashed here – we’ll find something else to short if we fall off this support level. 200 dmas need to be held and those are: Dow 10,250 (8,650 is next major support), S&P 1,100 (900), Nasdaq 2,225 (not there yet! 1,800), NYSE 7,100 (5,500) and Russell 630 (still above! 500)."
We never did hold those levels but, as I mentioned in Friday morning’s post, I thought the end of day sell-off on Thursday was a bit forced, and, in my first Alert of Friday morning I said: "TAKE THOSE SHORT PROFITS OFF THE TABLE!" Now, I am not prone to making statements in all caps in Member Chat - almost never is about how often so this was a pretty important statement. Before that Alert, right at 9:42, I had already called for the SPY $105 calls at $2.45 as our first trade of the day. Those calls finished at $4.11, up 67% for the day so a good start to our expiration day!
A good start and our other day trades did very nicely as well:
- FXI June $39 calls at .98, now $1.28 - up 30%
- DIA May $102 calls at .13, out at .45 – up 246%
- DIA May $101 calls at .95, out at .80 - down 16%
- DIA May $101 calls at .10, out at .80 – up 700%
Of course we followed our strategies and took 1/2 the DIA’s off the table at a double so the other half was a free ride (we like to gamble but we’re not crazy!) but the FXI was the only "keeper" for the day, we’ll see if that was a good idea on Monday. We also took (as I said we would in the morning post) a number of well-hedged, bullish plays on BA (from the post), TNA, TBT (have I mentioned how much I like them lately?), INTC, AAPL, VLO, FCX (I guess we’re done relentlessly shorting them!), XOM and…
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Natural Gas Options Trader Enacts Bullish Risk Reversal
by Andrew Wilkinson - February 16th, 2010 4:32 pm
Today’s tickers: UNG, IP, EEM, CAH, TRA, UAUA, USO, WFMI, BRK.B & ANF
UNG – United States Natural Gas ETF – Shares of the natural gas exchange-traded fund, which mirrors the price and performance of natural gas, are down 1.85% to $9.67 with just under one hour remaining in the trading session. Options traders initiated bullish plays in the March contract despite the dip lower in the price of the underlying shares. It looks like one investor initiated a bullish risk reversal to position for a rebound in the price per UNG share by March expiration. The trader sold 8,250 in-the-money puts at the March $10 strike for a premium of $0.64 each in order to offset the cost of buying 8,250 calls at the same strike for $0.40 apiece. The trader pockets a net credit of $0.24 per contract on the reversal, which he keeps if shares of the fund trade above $10.00 by expiration day. Additional profits are available to the upside if and when the price per share exceeds $10.00 apiece.
IP – International Paper Co. – Global paper and packaging firm, International Paper Company, enticed bullish options traders to initiate optimistic positions in the March contract as shares of the underlying stock jumped 6% in late afternoon trading to $23.92. Plain-vanilla call buying took place at the March $25 strike where upwards of 10,000 contracts were purchased for an average premium of $0.45 apiece. Call buyers stand ready to accrue profits should IP’s shares rally another 6.40% over the current value of the stock to surpass the effective breakeven point on the calls at $25.45 by March expiration.
EEM – iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index ETF – Shares of the emerging markets exchange-traded fund, which generally corresponds to the price of the MSCI Emerging Markets index that was created by MSCI as a benchmark for international stock performance, rallied 2.30% to $39.32 this afternoon. June contract options activity on the EEM suggests shares may stagnate near the current price through expiration in four months. It looks like options traders sold straddles in order to pocket premium on the sale of both calls and puts. Investors sold approximately 9,100 calls at the June $39 strike for an average premium of $2.95 apiece and sold 9,100 puts at the same strike for a premium of $2.65 each. Gross premium enjoyed by straddle-sellers amounts to $5.60 per contract. Investors…
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Love Letters (Weekend Reading on Valentine’s Day)
by Phil - February 14th, 2010 8:25 am
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Last Valentine’s Day was as Saturday, following a frightening Friday the 13th, where we had fallen through the 8,000 line on the Dow. I wrote a very interesting post that morning discussing how I came about my political views, which is good for new Members to check out. We also flipped short that day on SKF, too early at $130 but that ended well as we kept after them and it was our biggest bet by March 6th, which eventually returned over 1,000%. We also stopped shorting GOOG at $350 (it did keep going to $300 but the upside was nice too). I closed the morning post with:
For us, it’s all about the levels as we try to remain unbiased as investors, no matter how voraciously we defend our political views. Dow 7,800, S&P 820, Nas 1,460, NYSE 5,100, Russell 437 and SOX 203 all better continue to hold today but, even if they do, we’re nowhere near where we want to be and we’re going to take some bearish covers into the weekend – just in case. So whether you are a witch celebrating the horrors of the 13th or waiting for a rose from your true love the next day, remember to be careful out there – we are certainly still deep, deep in the woods!
That Tuesday (Monday was President’s day) we fell 300 points and another 300 points by the end of the week! That was a fitting way to mark the 80th anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre when Al Capone’s "South Side" gang, dressed as cops, rousted a garage run by Bugs Moran’s "North Side" gang and had them stand against the wall and then executed all 7 men. They shot them 70 times with machine guns and made their escape by using the Capone men dressed as cops to "arrest" the other Capone men and drive them away from the scene in broad daylight. Now that’s what I call a good plan!
Here’s a great chart that summarizes our year to date. Someone else found this, I wish I knew how to use StockCharts this well, they have tons of good things in there:
It’s a bit worrying that XLU is doing so poorly – so much for diversification keeping you safe… It’s going to be worth rummaging through the utility companies looking for good dividend payers who are on sale. SO…
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October Overview – When the Goblins Come Home to Roost
by Phil - November 1st, 2009 8:15 am
What a crazy month we had!
The Dow began the month of October at 9,712 and finished the month of October at EXACTLY 9,712. Now I don’t want to say the market is manipulated but… No, I’ve got nothing, there are no buts – the market is totally manipulated! Either that or you believe that the random outcome of tens of millions of traders around the globe trading hundreds of billions of shares of stock would just so happen to begin and end the month within .50 after going as low as 9,378.77 (on the 5th) and as high as 10,157.94 (on the 21st). So that is literally a 1 out of the 779-point swing coincidence to hit that 9,712 nail on the head.
At PSW we couldn’t be happier about this frankly. As I often say to members: We don’t care IF the game is rigged, as long as we can figure out HOW the game is rigged so we can play along. We were bearish in our September 27th Wrap-Up when I predicted that Earnings season would bring about a "Return to Fundamentals." We targeted retrace moves of Dow 9,512, S&P 1,020, Nasdaq 2,030, NYSE 9,496 and Russell 556 – all of which we hit the following Friday.
That week I highlighted my fundamental market concerns and Monday (9/28) my topic was "6 Unemployed People Per Available Job," Tuesday I said "Consumer Confidence is Key," Wednesday we caught the turn perfectly as I predicted "End of Quarter, End of Pump," and Thursday, October 1st was the day that "REIT’s Turned Rotten" – which was something we had been playing for during the September rally so we were thrilled with what is NOW the 2nd worst down day of the month. That was the day GS decided to agree with me that REITs were over-valued and gave us a signal that the Gang of 12 were no longer all on the same page. Friday, the 2nd, we were back to looking at the Jobs numbers when I asked "Is Anybody Working for the Weekend."
We could not have been more pleased with what was the worst week in the market since then end of August, which was a,most as bad at the beginning of July (are you beginning to see a pattern?) and I said that Friday: "Just like any good roller coaster, market plunges can…
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Testy Tuesday – Apple Leads Earnings Boosters
by Phil - October 20th, 2009 8:29 am
Wheee, being bullish is fun!
We’re still not great at it as we shorted a few toppy-looking calls yesterday (WFMI, QLD, SPY and POT) but that was a normal offset to bullish plays on SO, ERX, VZ, RIMM, BMY, EMC, AAPL, TXN and T. Of course, we’re also playing our bullish Watch List, which still has plenty of laggards that we’re picking up. SRS was irresistible as they fell below $9.50 again but clearly we tipped bullish and all those bullish plays from last week should start bearing some fruit as well. The best thing about being a bull is – the markets went up for no reason on low volume and we were happy about it – Imagine that!
Of course we are still skeptical because the economy still sucks but it is fun to get a little more bullish while it lasts. Even our too bearish $100KP enjoyed yesterday’s action, finishing the day $101,364. That won’t last if we keep going higher and I’ll be looking for some bullish plays to officially add there if we hold our levels today (we didn’t yesterday).
AAPL is going to be a huge winner for us this morning. We’ve been selling Jan $165 and $170 puts for weeks as our key way to play earnings (collecting between $5 and $7) and yesterday, in Member Chat, I suggested selling the $185 puts for $7 as well as the April $180/200 bull call spread, also at $7. It was my position that you would be better off putting $2,000 into either of those plays than you would be spending $18,750 to buy 100 shares of the stock ahead of earnings. It will be interesting to see which position fares better today.
In other earnings fun, we are strategically taking well-hedged earnings plays. ZION was a ratio backspread, buying 4 Apr $21 calls for $2.10 and selling 6 Dec $19 calls for $1.55 in a bearish play on their earnings. Looking good so far. BSX was also played for a miss, selling an even amount of Nov $10s against the Feb $11s, both at .65 and we went bullish on TXN, buying 6 Jan $25s for .82 and selling just 4 Nov $24s for .70 as we expected good but not great earnings there. We’ll see how those do today but they’re all looking like winners in pre-market. The nice thing about plays like this is the are fairly low-risk and not capital intensive…
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Weekly Wrap Up – Double Up or Double Top?
by Phil - October 10th, 2009 8:37 am
Not such a good week!
Last week was FANTASTIC and we had 28 winning trades out of 36 with an average gain of 42% on the winners and an average loss of 12% on the losers – now THAT’s A GOOD WEEK. We were stopped out of most of our bearish trades on Monday but we took a lot of new ones, which I’ll get into later… Of course, since we are rangish and play both ends, the good news is we still had our "losers" and puts that we sold on long positions and those turned into huge winners in just 5 days:
- AA at $13.30, out at $15 - up 12.7%
- AAPL Jan $165 puts sold for $7.40, now $4.70 – up 36%
- BAC Oct $17 puts sold for .97, now .28 – up 71%
- DIA Nov $92 calls at $5.40, now $7.30 - up 35%
- MHP 2011 $25 puts sold for $5.20, now 5.10 – up 2%
- RIMM March $100 calls at $1.45, now $1.25, down 13.7%
So, of the 6 that were not working last week, 5 are winners this week. As I mentioned at the end of last week’s wrap up, we were more than satisfied with our 5% drop that week and we did expect a bit of a bounce but we made the mistake of thinking The 250 points we gained by Tuesday morning was the end of it, but here we are at the end of the week, another 100 points higher and right back where we started from when we shorted into the rally in mid September.
Last weekend we were at a great point in our range as all our put plays had just paid off, this will be an interesting contrast as we have serious problems with our new short plays and we have a little less conviction than we had in mid September that we will get our correction – not after such a sharp turn off the 5% line this week. Nonetheless, we did stay 55% bearish into the weekend overall – still playing for our range. But, I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s go back to Monday and see how we got here….
Monday Market Manipulation – Goldman’s CIT Bonanza
I was not at all pleased with the scam GS was running on CIT and neither were many in the press but their attention span lasted all of 24 hours as the markets…
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Cubist Calls Active As Shares Rise 10%
by Andrew Wilkinson - August 5th, 2009 5:02 pm
Today’s tickers: CBST, EFA, IYR, WFMI, PG, FXI, UNG & DVA
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Gaylord Welcomes New Options Players As Investors Target Upside
by Andrew Wilkinson - August 4th, 2009 4:22 pm
Today’s tickers: GET, BAC, WFMI, KSS, HGSI, MOS, AES & NUAN
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Option trader predicts natural gas set to rally into next heating season
by Andrew Wilkinson - May 15th, 2009 6:08 am
Today’s tickers: UNG, HIG, XLF, XRT, CLF, WFMI & VRTX
UNG– Shares of the natural gas fund have rallied by more than 1% to stand at $16.66. We observed some bullish call buying on the ETF by one investor looking for natural gas prices to heat up as we head into the beginning of ‘heating season’ in October. It appears that this individual looked to the October 20 strike price and purchased 26,000 calls for an average premium of 1.45 apiece. The 31,000 call options traded at the October 20 strike today is more than five times the existing open interest at the strike of just 6,834 lots. With a breakeven point of $21.45 on the trade, the investor is hoping to see shares of UNG rally by a minimum of 29% from the current price so he may begin to garner profits to the upside. – United States Natural Gas ETF
HIG– Investors in the insurance and financial services firm have witnessed HIG’s shares surge more than 21% today to the current price of $15.23. While a mass of more than 120,000 option contracts exchanged hands on the stock throughout the trading day, our attention was drawn to a couple of bullish plays. Traders who expect the stock to retain gains into next month looked to the June 16 strike price and purchased some 4,000 calls for an average premium of 1.20 each. Investors will breakeven at a price of $17.20 by expiration. Uber-bullishness was observed at the September 25 strike where about 4,400 calls appear to have been purchased for a premium of 91 cents per contract. These call-buyers have thrown a Hail Mary pass today, but they will have to wait to see whether it will be received in the end zone or whether it will fall short by expiration. To profit from the long-call position, shares will need to rally with a vengeance by about 70% through the breakeven point at $25.91. Option implied volatility has climbed throughout the week from 112% on Monday to the current reading of 144%. – Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.
XLF– The financials ETF, a daily presence on our ‘most active by options volume’ market scanner, has enjoyed a more than 3.5% rally to $11.80 amid broad gains enjoyed by financial firms today. While more than 250,000 option contracts were traded on the fund, we focused in on one…
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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. She manages the Favorites backup site
(