Volume Spike Investor » LEH

Lehman Volume Surge On Hopes & Prayers (LEH)

247admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:56:01 +0000

Lehman Brothers Holdings (NYSE: LEH) has already traded almost half of an average day’s volume, and it’s only 9:51 AM EST. The brokerage firm is up 13% at $15.54 on over 25 million shares after reports that the Korean Development Bank is interested in acquiring the company. Key financial analyst Dick Bove of Ladenberg Thalmann believes that a buyer could essentially finance the company for nearly free if they sold off the money management unit. He also believes that a hostile takeover is likely and that CEO Dick Fuld is going to be under severe pressure as soon as next week to leave or to take action if nothing comes. This may be a huge improvement from the lows of $12.02 seen recently, but shares were north of $67.00 over the last year. We have already seen more than 1,000 contracts trade in call options the SEP08 strike prices of $15, $18, and $20…… stay tuned! Sometimes hopes and prayers do actually come true.

JON OGG

August 22, 2008

Options Spike: Washington Mutual (WM)

247admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:14:24 +0000

Washington Mutual Inc. (NYSE: WM) has seen some unusual stock options activity in the last hour or so. With the weakness in Lehman Brothers after its losses and $6 Billion financing and with everyone on Wall Street asking “who’s next?”, this one might not be that large of a surprise. Here is the unusual trading with open interest (OpInt.):

CONTRACT LAST VOLUME OpInt
JULY-09 $12.50 Call $0.10 27,075 43,608

It looks like a speculator is making a bet that the bad news in the financial sector is going to be a “we’ve seen the worst for now” by July, but that’s a hard one to call. This could also just be a large hedge for a short sale. WaMu’s stock is also active with almost 30 million shares having traded hands.

Jon Ogg
June 9, 2008

11:14 AM EST

Aggressive Put Options Activity Again in Lehman (LEH)

247admin — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:21:13 +0000

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEH) has been under aggressive fire, and with all the needs of capital that have been rumored it is of no real surprise. Even though the company has denied every rumor out there, it is seeing excessive PUT OPTION activity in the early morning and that should lead to even more volume after the other traders spot this.

At 10:07 AM EST we noticed the following options contracts had traded:
Co    Mo/Strike contracts Price     Change
LEH   JUN20        2,838     $1.00    (+$0.29)
LEH   JUL20         1,932     $1.74    (+$0.34)
LEH   JUN25        1,931     $2.04    (+$0.32)
LEH   JUL30         1,519     $4.80    (+$0.60)
LEH   JUN30        1,512     $3.70    (+$0.35)

By 10:17 AM EST we have seen Lehman shares themselves trade more than 32 million shares, making it already crossing another average daily volume level. Also by 10:17 AM EST the number of these options contracts had grown far more to more than 7,500 of the JUN20 PUTS and the other strikes were more active as well.

Jon Ogg
June 4, 2008