Volume Spike Investor » INTC

Option Expiration’s Largest Open Interest Contracts (GE, MSFT, PFE, INTC, YHOO, CSCO, WFC, SPY, QQQQ, FXI, XLK, XHB)

247admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:40:04 +0000

Today marks the January 2011 options expiration date. There are many active options expiring, and the reason these are so large is because many are LEAPS rather than just normal monthly options. The old rule of thumb is that options tend to drift toward their closest and most active options contract strike prices. We identified the largest contracts with the highest open interest. These are all in major players and in major ETFs after that.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) JAN11 $20 Call has 234,732 contracts; JAN11 $19 Call has 209,801 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $19.46.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) JAN11 $30 Call 210,520 contracts; MSFT $27.50 Call 162,676 contracts…. Share price at 11:30 $28.10.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) JAN11 $17.50 Call… 186,517 contracts; JAN11 $20 Call… 192,992 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $18.25.

Intel Corporation JAN11 $22.50 Call has 186,623 contracts; JAN11 $21.00 Call has 164,583 contracts… Share price at 11:30 $20.90.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) JAN11 $17.50 Call has 161,010 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $16.01.

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) JAN11 $19 Put has 142,583 contracts and the $20 Put has 136.060 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $20.78.

Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) JAN11 $30 Call… 104,257 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $32.49 so look at the $32.50: Call has 67,906 contracts and Put has 42,812 contracts.

In ETFs:

SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) JAN11 $125 Put has 358,490 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $128.74.

PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ: QQQQ) JAN11 $54 Put has 217,276 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $56.04.

iShares FTSE China 25 Index Fund (NYSE: FXI) JAN11 $40 Call has 138,131 contracts and teh $40 Put has 136,096 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $43.45, so other strike prices matter more.

Technology Select Sector SPDR (NYSE: XLK) JAN11 $26 Call… 132,322 contracts; Share price at 11:30 $25.86.

JON C. OGG

Intel Pre-Earnings Options Analysis (INTC)

247admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:25:44 +0000

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is due with earnings Thursday after the close and we could not help but notice two key issues around the options trading in Intel. First was that the volatility is much lower and the options market is not expecting a huge price move from earnings. Second would be that the bias remains much more skewed to a bullish bias.

The CALL options trading was far more active with more than 85,000 of the JAN11 CALLS traded versus less than 40,000 of the JAN11 PUTS traded.

Shares closed up 1.2% at $21.30 Wednesday and the 52-week trading range is $17.60 to $24.37. The bias is bullish going into earnings as far as the options are concerned and frankly the volatility here loos lower than normal as we’d assign a mere $0.50 to $0.60 expected move based upon the closing price of the closest PUTS and CALLS.

Stay tuned, maybe those figures and expectations will widen out a tad on Thursday since that is the actual earnings date.

JON C. OGG

Chips Beating and Challening 52-Week Highs (INTC, LLTC, SMH, AMD)

247admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:36:07 +0000

Chip stocks are almost all trading higher this morning after Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) and Linear Technology Corp. (NASDAQ: LLTC) beat earnings and gave upbeat outlooks. LLTC is up 3.5% at $30.69 on 40,000 shares, versus a 52-week range of $20.26 to $31.21. Intel is up 4.7% at $23.85 above yesterday’s $22.82 high of the last 52-weeks and on over 2 million shares. Semiconductor HOLDRs (NYSE: SMH) is up 3.2% at $29.90 on 30,000 shares. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) is up 3.7% at $9.92 on 70,000 shares versus a 52-week range of $3.17 to $10.04. (8:32 AM EST)

JON OGG

2010 Actives Outlook: Options vs. Stock (AAPL, BAC, RIMM, XOM, PFE, CSCO, INTC, GLD, SLV)

247admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:43:09 +0000

2010 is here and we wanted to take a look at the largest catalyst for options volume and how it may translate into active stock trading for the January 2010 options expiration date. In this matter we looked solely at the closest in-the-money and out-of-the-money call options that expire on January 15, 2010 because these will expire before almost all of these companies will have reported their calendar or fiscal Q4 earnings report. We have looked at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM), Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC). We even wanted to look at this in the metals of gold and silver ETFs via the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD) and the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV).

We have then converted what each options contract series means in control of share exposure on a fully leveraged basis versus the average daily volume. The CBOE VOLATILITY INDEX closed out 2010 under 20.0, meaning it is at least in theory very cheap for speculators to use stock options for exposure.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) $210.73; Avg. Daily volume 18.3 million shares. Apple does not look like much, but if you will go back to last Monday the readings of speculative options trading was literally off the charts with the equivalent of more than 14 million shares in options trading on a fully leveraged basis.
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$210.00   59,605   5.96 million
$220.00   60,598   6.05 million
$230.00   36,605   3.66 million

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) $15.06; Avg. Daily volume 201 million shares
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$16.00   297,920   29.7 million
$17.50   297,065   29.7 million

Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) $67.54; Avg. Daily volume 17.7 million shares
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$70.00   61,526   6.15 million
$75.00   41,724   4.17 million
$80.00   103,290   10.3 million

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) $68.19; Avg. Daily volume 23.5 million shares
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$70.00   81,379   8.13 million
$75.00   104,424   10.4 million
$80.00   70,442   7.04 million

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) $18.19; Avg. Daily volume 52.8 million
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$17.50   211,372   21.1 million
$19.00   102,084   10.2 million
$20.00   217,542   21.7 million

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) $23.94; Avg. Daily volume 40 million shares
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$22.50   44,248   4.42 million
$24.00   65,232   6.52 million
$25.00   132,091   13.20 million

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) $20.40; Avg. Daily volume 61.3 million shares
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$20.00   252,618   25.2 million
$21.00   97,351   9.73 million
$22.50   72,696   7.26 million

We also see this in both key metal ETF’s which track gold and silver prices, although these of course are metal price exposure plays rather than anything related to stocks:

SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD) $107.31; Avg. Daily volume 20.7 million shares and the equivalent of more than 46 million shares in options on a fully leveraged basis:
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$100.00   66,713   6.67 million
$105.00   44,346   4.44 million
$110.00   74,437   7.44 million
$112.00   38,853   3.88 million
$113.00   22,898   2.28 million
$115.00   77,528   7.75 million
$116.00   27,953   2.79 million
$117.00   27,933   2.79 million
$120.00   88,176   8.81 million

iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) at $16.54; Avg. Daily volume 12.1 million shares; this comes to over 40 million shares on a fully leveraged basis:
CALL$   OpInt   Share Equivalent
$14.00   74,986   7.49 million
$15.00   15,300   1.53 million
$16.00   38,815   3.88 million
$17.00   74,446   7.44 million
$18.00   49,232     4.92 million
$19.00   128,848   12.8 million
$20.00   37,576    3.75 million

I would like to personally invite you to join in with the thousands of readers on our free daily email distribution list from 24/7 Wall St. to hear about ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, analyst upgrades and downgrades, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and IPOs, and more.

JON C. OGG
January 2, 2010

NVIDIA/AMD Win As Intel Scraps Chip (NVDA)

247admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:40:39 +0000

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) surging this morning after Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) has canceled the launch of its own graphics chipset based on its own Larrabee design. The reason cited was because the silicon and software development were said to be behind where Intel was hoping they would be at this point. At 8:39 AM EST we have AMD up 3.5% at $8.14 on 335,000 shares and NVDA is up 11% at $15.85 on 360,000 shares. Intel conversely is down, but less than 1%… shares are down 0.8% at $20.30 and only on 75,000 shares.

JON C. OGG

Snubbing Intel (INTC)

247admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:21:41 +0000

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is down 3% at $19.50 on over 300,000 shares as of 8:20 AM EST. This is on the Bank of America Merrill Lynch downgrade this morning… it is also nailing all the semiconductors as the entire sector was downgraded. Not much else is left to say…

JON OGG

Intel Up, But Off Last Night’s Highs (INTC)

247admin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:21:21 +0000

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is surging this morning as a most active stock of big NASDAQ names. You know that it beat earnings, raised guidance, and talked up even the higher-end of its product spread. At 8:18 AM EST we have seen a gain of 4.5% at $21.41 on about 1.7 million shares. This will be well above the 60 million shares on average probably by noon today. Be advised taht Intel traded over 15 million shares last night after the earnings stock halt and it traded up as high as $21.90 from what we saw and from what day traders were telling us when they were trying to short sell at $22.00 without getting filled.

JON C. OGG

Apple (AAPL) Higher On Wall St. Optimism

247admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:12:14 +0000

Several analysts made comments about the strength of Apple’s (AAPL) future prospects. Intel (INTC) and Nvidia (NVDA) seem to be rising in sympathy

Douglas A. McIntyre

Intel Drives Friends and Rivals (INTC, DELL, MSFT, AMD, NVDA, MU, RMBS)

247admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:40:24 +0000

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) guidance is driving the tech sector, despite Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) already giving a lift to the sector…..Right before the open at 9:28 AM EST Intel stock is up 4.5% at $20.35 on about 8 million shares. Look at peers and competitors:

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) is up over 5% at $4.30 on well over 1 million shares right before the open…
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) was up 2.2% at $25.22 on only about 600,000 shares.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) was up 2.4% at $14.35 on 52-week highs.
Micron Technology Inc. (NYSE: MU) is up 2% at $7.35 on volume, also on 52-week highs.
Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS) is up 1% at $19.40 on light volume, but keep an eye on $19.94 as that is the 52-week high level.

JON C. OGG

PREMARKET ALERT: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, INTC)

247admin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:08:31 +0000

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) are down 11 percent to $3.63 on early premarket volume of more than 43,000 shares. The chipmaker reported a loss last night of 62 cents a share ex items. Analysts had been anticipating a loss of 47 cents a share. Revenue fell 13 percent from the same period a year earlier to $1.18 billion, above analyst expectations of $1.13 billion. The company called its gross margin of 27 percent “disappointing”. Shares of AMD’s main chip rival Intel Corp (Nasdaq: INTC) were upgraded by JMP Securities last night, partly on expected market share gains — Mike Tarsala