Volume Spike Investor

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (NYSE: GAP) is widely reported as getting ready for a bankruptcy  Check out the options trading in DECEMBER-2010: CALL$    Volume    OpInt 0.50    2,598    5 1.50    5,238    10 2.00    2,201    35 PUT$    Volume    OpInt 1.00    4,940    1,280 1.50    666    1,035 2.00    6,411    2,873 2.50    1,345    7,749 Here is [...]

By now you already know that Howard Stern has announced that he is sticking with SIRIUS XM Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) in a new 5-year deal.  What is interesting is how much trading has gone into the news this morning.  It is almost an hour into the trading day and SIRIUS shares are already approaching [...]

There were two hot Chinese IPOs that debuted today and to call them ‘hot’ may be an understatement.  Seeing two near-doubles in a single day is not the norm even for a bull market.  These two are in Youku.com Inc. (NYSE: YOKU) and E-commerce China Dangdang Inc. (NYSE: DANG). Youku.com Inc. (NYSE: YOKU) priced 15,847,700 [...]

The Talbots Inc. (NYSE: TLB) is having an awful day in the markets and on very strong volume.  The earnings report and the guidance are to blame.  While profits rose 17%, lower revenue and lower guidance is a drag and then some. Earnings were $0.27 EPS and revenue was $299.1 million, while Thomson Reuters was [...]

Columbia Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBRX) is seeing a massive volume explosion this morning.  The company reported an update on its Phase III trial of Prochieve, a gel which aims to help preterm birth rate declines.  In short, it is designed to lower premature birth.  It and and Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE: WPI) said that PROCHIEVE [...]

Palm Harbor Homes Inc. (NASDAQ: PHHM) is one of the rare exceptions of what happens when companies file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11.  The company announced by press release that it and 5 subsidiaries have filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The company has partnered with Fleetwood [...]

McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD) and The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) are not stocks we generally associate with dividend capture trades, or dividend stripping trades.  On Friday, there were two major groupings of large call options trades out in January 2011 expiration. We confirmed with Joe Kunkle of OptionsHawk.com that these were dividend stripping trades.  It [...]

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is up on its own today, but the stock is seeing very elevated trading activity in its weekly options which expire this Friday.  The trade is an obvious bet on strong Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sales figures being sent through the Amazon.com sites.  An unofficial 4:00 PM EST close of [...]

El Paso Corporation (NYSE: EP) is down today, but not only news of its own.  It turns out the the widely reported ongoing insider trading probe is to blame.  A hedge fund called Diamondback Capital has El Paso as a key holding.  Shares saw a rapid drop today after 12 EST when word came out [...]

SIGA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIGA) is getting crushed this morning after the Small Business Administration ruled that SIGA was “other than small”  after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had announced its intention to award SIGA a contract with HHS to deliver 1.7 million courses of its smallpox antiviral for the Strategic [...]