The company has traded over 36,000 options in the first hour on total daily average option volume of just 7,322. All but 3,158 contracts have been calls yielding a 10:1 call:put ratio. The largest trades have been Dec 5 call purchases (~25,000x). The Stats Tab and Day's biggest trades snapshots are included (click either image to enlarge).
The Options Tab (click to enlarge) illustrates that the Dec 5 calls are mostly opening (compare OI to trade size). Note also how vol is up across the board from Oct through Jan'12.
The Skew Tab snap (click to enlarge) illustrates the vols by strike by month.
This is interesting. It looks like the order flow has pushed the upside skew upwards creating a parabola. This makes a call spread unique in that you can scalp skew while getting long. The vols are of particular importance in this name, let's look to the charts to see why.
Finally, the Charts Tab (6 months) is below (click to enlarge). The top portion is the stock price, the bottom is the vol (IV120™ - green vs HV120™ - purple). The yellow shaded area at the very bottom is the IV30™ vs. the HV20™ vol difference.
Note how the IV120™ is well above the HV120™ and diverging even more of late. As of right now I see the difference as ~56 to 44 or 12 vol points. The call purchases today actually printed on vol as high as 60 (see largest trades snap in the top of the article).
A Dec 5/7 call spread looks to purchase 55 vol and sell 58 vol. If you like the order flow and want to get some deltas in here, a spread looks pretty good - neutralizing the high vol and even scalping a bit. Paying $0.60 in the 5/7 call spread seems reasonable. The trade doesn't scream good or bad to me.
The 52 wk range for the stock is [$2.85,$7.47], which is pretty wide.
This is trade analysis, not a recommendation.
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what do you mean by the term "scalp"?
ReplyDeleteI simply mean buying low and selling high. In this case, vol.
ReplyDelete