Daily Wrap-up - A Mild Gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average

Tags: DJIA
2 Jul 5:59am
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The day ends with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) up 57 points. That is off the best levels of the session but does recoup much of what was lost yesterday so the back-and-forth continues. The Amex Gold Bugs Index (HUI) remained the strongest group while the Amex Biotech Index (BTK) and US Oil Fund (USO) were the weakest. As I reiterated again earlier, the action is light so I am not putting too much emphasis on it. In fact, I am going to use it as an excuse to spend a few d...

Bears Have a Healthy Appetite for Puts on Whole Foods Market, Inc.

Tags: WFMI
2 Jul 4:44am
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Pessimism toward Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFMI) is reaching peak levels among option traders on the International Securities Exchange (ISE). During the past 10 days, speculators on the ISE have bought to open 16,290 puts on WFMI, compared to just 1,154 calls. The stock's 10-day put/call volume ratio of 14.12 ranks less than one percentage point from an annual peak, as traders have rarely shown a greater preference for puts over calls. As a result, the stock's Schaeffer's put/call ope...

Rising Skepticism on SanDisk Corporation

Tags: SNDK
2 Jul 3:39am
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Puts were much more popular than calls yesterday on SanDisk Corporation (SNDK), at least among traders on the International Securities Exchange (ISE). Traders on the ISE bought to open 1,734 puts on SNDK, compared to just 196 calls. The day's bearish bias is in keeping with the recent trend among SNDK's option traders. The stock sports a 10-day put/call volume ratio of 1.38, which ranks higher than 95% of other such readings taken during the past year. In other words, traders on the ...

Midday Market Check - The Back and Forth Continues

Tags: DJIA
2 Jul 2:25am
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We head into the second half of the session with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) off its best levels but still up 90 points. That, of course, seems to be the magic number this week. The Dow gained that amount on Monday and more or less gave back that same amount yesterday. Today, the bulls are back (or at least a few of them) to push the market back to where it stood Monday. Continuing the "yo-yo" theme, we find that yesterday's weakest sector, the Amex Gold Bugs Index (HUI)...

Option Skews - Relatively Heavy Call Activity on Citigroup Inc, Bank of America Corp, Research in Motion Limited

Tags: BAC
1 Jul 11:11pm
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Here are the stocks seeing a bias toward call activity on Tuesday. This filtered scan is based on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) buy-to-open data. It looks for stocks where the previous day's call volume on the ISE is at least twice as great as the put volume. It then sorts the stocks based on the call volume. Since this is buy-to-open data, this can be a good source for finding stocks where optimism is emerging. Of particular interest to me would be situations where we see call...

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SchaeffersResearch

Schaeffer’s Investment Research, founded by Bernie Schaeffer in 1981, is a research-driven provider of investment research and recommendations featuring a unique, time-tested analysis of investor expectations. Schaeffer's contrarian approach, called Expectational Analysis®, focuses on stocks with technical and fundamental trends that run counter to investor expectations. The firm publishes Bernie Schaeffer's Option Advisor, the nation's leading options subscription publication and it's website, www.SchaeffersResearch.com, is recognized as one of the leading information sources for stock and options traders and was cited as the top options website by both Forbes and Barron's.