And The Pot Called The Kettle Black
This from New York mag's Daily Intel.CNBC's Charlies Gasparino doesn't ordinarily have the time to listen to people who don't matter on Wall Street. But this one website, Zero Hedge, sticks in his craw. Every time he says something vaguely charitable a...
VXXing Problems
Well, this market has become Exhibit A of why we can only go so far hyperanalyzing VIX futures premiums (discounts). We spent several post looking into it and what it all meant. Basically the thought was it was bullish for volatility itself and bearish...
Green Shoots About To Get Tired?
That volatility smack you're feeling? Does not bode so well said Dr. Brett yesterday.Going back to 2000, we have had 130 such instances of 20-day highs in stocks and 20-day lows in volatility. Five days later, SPY averaged a loss of -.32% (52 up, 78 do...
Feelin’ The Earth Move
The Day After in CAT, and guess what? You can buy some options! Cateripillar (CAT) is down $1.03 to $38.43 and 149K puts traded today, compared to 22K calls. The order flow is being driven primarily by put sellers. According to an exchange-floor conta...
America’s Got Talent
I've long recommended just letting everyone write their tax checks directly to Wall Street management. Would save a mint in clerical expenses. Looks like we should start at JP Morgan.Morgan Stanley revealed today that it had set aside 72 percent of its...
Mourning Volatility
Now it's tempting to want to own options. Volatility is as low as anyone remembers (providing you can't recall anything since last September), and is now relatively close to realized volatility. You can even get earnings thrown in for *free*, like in A...
Some Expiration Day Sonar
It's expiration day today in the VIX July Options! And the verdict is.....ZZZZZZ. The July's will settle on the opening *print*, so expect to see 4 kajillion SPX OTM puts trade on the open. But don't expect it do all that much (barring a big market gap...
Two Apples a Day
OK, so for the first time since forever, bought a little pre-earnings gamma. Sort of.I shorted some August strangles in AAPL and bought a greater quantity of October strangles. Octs were 33 volatility which is actually 10% lower than a normalized 30 da...
Collaring Some Gold?
Barrick Gold (ABX) is down 29 cents to $35.30 after gold gave up early gains and is now off 30 cents to $948.50. The top trades in ABX Monday included 2,750 Oct 40 calls and 2,70 Oct 31 puts, which appear to be part of a “collar”, as a block of 228...
Apple Brewing
So AAPL reports tonight. And the public is so nervous about what St. Stephen might say that the options trade at about a 52 week low in volatility terms.Yes that's correct, 52 week lows ahead of news. You don't see that too often unless you look at som...
Big In Japan
Some bullish action in EWJ, via optionMONSTER.optionMONSTER's tracking systems detected the purchase of 50,000 September 10 calls in the iShares MSCI Japan Index for $0.10. It was matched against the sale of 25,000 September 9 puts for $0.20, resulting...
Monday VIX Thoughts
As we face another day that may have an up VIX and up SPX, it's time for a weekly reminder that these are strange times in VIX-land.Despite the early strength, the VIX remains over 4 points below August futures. This disparity has persisted for a while...
