Trade Naked » Bac

Who Got Pinned?

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:16:22 +0000

This is the stream of Google prices today. Around 10:15 it looked like Google was pinned to the 430 strike, but it dropped a half hour later to 428.5 and then came back. By 11:45 it was clearly drifting lower, and didn’t come back to 430 until 1:45. Until the close, it stayed pretty near to 430, closing 21 cents above it.

So I sold this straddle for an average price of $3.70 and watched the elephant on a rope. It could break free any time and head off in another direction. Around 3:30 I bought it back.

Apple (AAPL) was pinned to the 150 strike by 10:14 and stayed there for three hours before taking off to end at 151.75. When I noticed that it was pinned around noon, the 150 straddle was selling for about $0.80 which I thought was too tight.

Bank of America (BAC) never strayed very far from the 13 strike, but the straddle would have been too tight also.

Look at Mastercard (MA), it is all contained between 179.50 and 181. Wish I had looked this morning.

Expiration Friday 17 July 2009

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:25:59 +0000

Hang Seng (Hong Kong): +2.42%

Australia: +1.25%

Nikkei 225 (Japan): +0.55%

Europe at mid-day:

FTSE 100 (UK): +0.80% at 10:30 AM

DAX (Germany): +0.82% at 11:52 PM

CAC 40 (France): +0.75% at 11:52 PM

European markets are up steadily since their open.

SPY after hours: +1.0% at 6:10 AM

QQQQ after hours: +1.0% at 6:11 AM

light volume for SPY and QQQQ after hours.

Economic Indicators: Building permits filed and housing starts for June, are announced at 8:29 AM EST. This is expected to be flat compared to May.

Before the market opens: GE and Mattel (MAT), toymaker of Barbie and Ken, and BB&T (BBT) a large regional bank, announce earnings.

During the day: Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) discuss earnings.

Should be an interesting options expiration day.

From WhatsTrading.Com

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:20:14 +0000

Order flow is important to gauge what is happening in a market, but as Adam Warner wrote in a previous post about WhatsTrading.com, you don’t know what to do with the information on large trades. Do you follow or fade? But it is a data point that brings, in this case, Bank of America onto your radar.

Could it be Dick Bove (shown) behind this trade?

BofA (BAC) is down 3 cents to $12.87 and fell 6.2 percent on the week, but some players in the options market expect strength over the next two months. BAC August 14 call option is today’s most actively traded contract, with 56K traded so far. Today’s trades include a “reverse diagonal spread”, where a strategist bought 15,000 August 14 calls and sold 15,000 January (2010) calls at the $20 strike. They paid 45 cents and are probably looking for a move beyond $14.45 by the August expiration, but not above $20 by mid-January.

…If you are interested in more info like this, check out WhatsTrading.com