With major US indices approaching multi-year highs and volatility, as represented by the VIX, seemingly heading towards the 15-level we decided to look for opportunities to purchase cheap protection in names that have outperformed the broader market. Investors appear to have entered a state of complacency now that 2Q earnings season has largely passed and […]
The Wall Street Journal ran a timely piece on Facebook heading into several lockup expirations over the coming weeks. We were seeing increased options activity, primarily downside put spread buyers in Facebook options as investors seem to be positioning for continued weakness in the name through year end. Trading was highlighted by buyers of the […]
RCL 2Q Earnings Volatility Preview: Royal Caribbean (RCL) is scheduled to report 2Q12 financial results tomorrow morning before the market opens. August at-the-money options in RCL appear to be on the cheaper side heading into earnings. Using yesterday’s closing prices, at-the-money options are implying a 4.3% earnings related move, below its average historical earnings move […]
The energy sector, along with the rest of the market, has taken a beating over the last month but with the price of crude approaching significant support we searched for ways to monetize a “bottoming” view using options. For purposes of our analysis we examined the XOP, the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & […]
Trading in Gold related instruments has been active during the most recent market downturn but not as active as one would expect and definitely not in the direction one would expect with equities collapsing. As of yesterday’s close the S&P500 is down 9% since May 1 primarily on European concerns and less than encouraging US […]
The Week Ahead. Our Earnings Volatility Monitor highlights companies scheduled to report earnings over the coming week, paying close attention to what near-term options are implying for earnings moves in comparison to how the names have moved historically on earnings. Fairly light earnings calendar this week. The most notable names set to release results include […]
What seems like our favorite tech company of late, Research In Motion (RIMM), is scheduled to report 3Q financial results next week on Thursday December 15th after the market close. Shares of RIMM have averaged a +/-10% move over its last 8 earnings announcements, with 5 of the reports pushing shares strongly to the downside […]
Mike Dillard and the team over at The Elevation Group have put together a series of videos revealing how to create (or recover) incredible wealth during today’s economic crisis. His team has generated returns of over 280% since 2008, while most investors are still recovering from the massive losses incurred during the down swing. So […]
Traditional options expiration is upon us, and as such today we will continue our discussion on options expiration strategies, which we briefly touched upon in last week’s report. But before we dive in, let’s talk RIMM. With shares of RIMM trading at $17.58 last week we suggested traders consider purchasing the Dec 17.5-16 1×2 put […]
Last week in The Weekly Options Report we highlighted 2 strategies to consider heading into the coming week: 1) selling downside puts in Yahoo (YHOO) and 2) long weekly straddles in Cisco (CSCO) heading into earnings. While the YHOO trade was clearly a winner, the CSCO trade, for some, is still up in the air […]