Wednesday, December 16, 2009

First Bancorp (FBP) - Big Straddle (Vol) Buyer

FBP is a $300 million bank which does business in Puerto Rico. The stock is trading ~2.65 and vol is up 13% today. You can see the LIVEVOL™ Pro Summary below.



The company averages 280 option contracts a day. In the first three hours of trading today it has traded over 17,000 contracts. That's 5500% of average volume in half a day. You can see the snapshot of the Company Tab below (right click the image and "open in a new tab" to enlarge it).



The largest trade was a purchase of Jun 2.5 puts for 0.65 against ~2.70 stock. This trade was delta neutral. Note that the condition reads "spread" although it was a purchase. This occures when a trade is entered then cancelled (see greyed out trade implying cancel) and then traded. It's just a quirk of the exchange. The day's largest options trades snap shot is below (right click the image and "open in a new tab" to enlarge it).



The snapshot of the Options tab makes clear from the OI that this was an opening trade (right click the image and "open in a new tab" to enlarge it).



Since the stock is close to the strike price, this is essentialy a purchase of a straddle. Calculations below:

Long Straddle = Puts + Calls
= 0.65 + Synthetic Calls
= 0.65 + (0.65 + parity + cost of carry)
= 0.65 + (0.65 + .20 + .01)
= $1.51

So the trade is profitable on June expo if the stock is above 4.01 or below 1.49. That's quite a move. The six month candelstck chart with vol below is provded for reference from the Charts tab (right click the image and "open in a new tab" to enlarge it). Note how unusually large the option volume is today(very bottom of chart) and how much the stock price has moved recently (top section of chart).



Interesting trade...

Legal Stuff:
http://www.livevolpro.com/help/disclaimer_legal.html

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