The table below shows the company, ticker, Wednesday's per share % increase, and Wednesday's volume increase (% increased compared to 50 day average). For your convenience I have ranked the stocks in order from greatest to least volume % change.
| Company | Ticker | Price Change | Volume Change |
| Timberline Resources | TLR | 60.24% | 1213.49% |
| Sykes Enterprises Inc | SYKE | 6.65% | 706.94% |
| Talbots Inc | TLB | 16.53% | 531.89% |
| Enzon Pharmaceuticals | ENZN | 1.03% | 504.59% |
| Veeco Instruments Inc | VECO | 4.31% | 332.42% |
| Claude Resources Inc | CGR | 9.21% | 265.31% |
| Brocade Comm Sys Inc | BRCD | 1.69% | 265.10% |
| Avanir Pharmaceuticals | AVNR | 13.62% | 219.47% |
| Tessera Technologies Inc | TSRA | 4.94% | 185.65% |
| Metabasis Therapeutics | MBRX | 1.91% | 112.12% |
| G Iii Apparel Group Inc | GIII | 9.72% | 111.18% |
| Orion Marine Group Inc | ORN | 6.55% | 103.45% |
| Telvent Git S A | TLVT | 6.76% | 102.17% |
| Mylan Inc | MYL | 3.86% | 85.62% |
| Phoenix Companies Inc | PNX | 12.20% | 50.32% |
During Wednesday's trade I noticed one of these stocks which I had been keeping an eye on from the day before, Sykes Enterprise (SYKE). As of Tuesday morning Sykes announced it would be acquiring ICT Group (NASDAQ:ICTG), and rallied on the news. It isn't too often that the company doing the buying rallies on this type of news, unless they get a super deal. Sykes purchased ICTG for $15.38 a share ($263 million, half in stock and half in cash), and they expect to save $20 million a year from this purchase. So how much higher can this stock go? I believe we could see it above $25 by expiration so Wednesday I purchased several 25 strike call options for the October expiration.
As you may have heard, Brocade has been in the news for takeover talks. This causes the options to explode on this name making it a great candidate for the Buy/Write option strategy. I held shares of Brocade prior to this release, but unfortunately I took $50 a contract for the October 8 strike a couple weeks ago. However as this stock was rising sharply Monday morning I purchased shares and waited until it crossed $9 to write them out. I wrote the shares out for a price 11% higher than the stock price at the time ($10) and took $30 per option contract. This lowered my cost basis to $8.41 a share and if it can get above $10 by expiration I will realize over 18.5%.
With the implied volatility still being high on the option contracts, and just over a week left until the October contracts expire I wouldn't mind looking to do the buy/write option strategy on the Brocade October 9 strike. As of Wednesday's close this would lower the cost per share to $8.60 giving a 4.7% return if Brocade can hold these levels until then.
A more bullish strategy would be to look at the contracts for the month ahead. One could purchase an at the money November 9 strike call option, and sell the November 11 strike call option against it (creating a vertical call spread) for $60 per option spread. Break even would be $9.60 at November expiration, and if Brocade traded at or above 11 a share at November expiration this position would yield 233%. However if Brocade did not move and expired at or below $9 a share at November expiration, 100% of the price paid for the spread would be lost ($60).
The ideas outlined above involve the use of stock options. The reason option volumes have surged in the last 5 years is because they are a great way to hedge your portfolio as well as create income off of your shares (see option volume chart).
These are just examples and are not recommendations to buy or sell any security; if you're more bullish/bearish, you’ll want to adjust the strike price and expiration accordingly.
Disclosure: Long BRCD, SYKE October 25 Call Options, Short: BRCD October 8 & 10 Call Options
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1 comments:
Thanks for you insight. I enjoy reading you blog. Please keep the trading ideas coming.
Kraig
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