Interactive Investor
(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica) Keywords: MARKETS STOCKS AFTERTHEBELL Interactive Investor Trading Limited, trading as "Interactive Investor", is authorised ...
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Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) has already been covered today on the would-be takeover rumor. Its implied volatility is merely up 3.4% on takeover chatter, but 58,000 calls and 16,390 puts have traded with bullish bias as 51% of calls are bought offer side, new opening buyers. A recent buyer of 8,750 November $16 calls with shares at $12.25 a week from expiration is very surprising. There are quite a few non-believers though as a 2,000 contract January $12.50/$10 put spread was bought to open for $1.13 and a block of 3,050 December $12 calls were sold below the bid at $1.28. This looks to be a rumor without a lot of conviction behind it, and I know if I was buying a company I would not be looking to buy the one getting its lunch fed to it by larger competitors as exhibited in recent smartphone sales data.
At 12:48 PM EST shares are up 7.7% at $12.34, yet we have still not seen a full day’s worth of volume.
Joe Kunkle, OptionsHawk.com
Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) is trading higher on those pesky takeover rumors all over again. Some say Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and some say Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is a possible suitor. Frankly, both have long been buyers of the company IF you listen to the rumor mill. We question the rumor though not just because this is probably the 20th such rumor on this. We have only seen 4.5 million shares trade hands at 10:15 AM EST and the shares are up almost 4% at $11.89.  We would note that there have been approximately 15,000 contracts that have traded hands at the same time in the NOV-2009 CALLS and there is some activity out in the JAN-2010 CALLS.
If a deal were to come, it seems that anything under a $15.00 share price would be laughed at and denied by holders in a vote. It might even take $20.00. The lows of $1.14 over the last year won’t be very relevant, but everyone under the sun will point to the $18.09 high.
As with all rumors, caveat emptor.
JON C. OGG
Nordstrom Inc. (NYSE: JWN) is seeing the same issue on earnings as other some other retailers. The high-end retailer said earnings were $0.38 EPS. That is a penny under the $0.39 estimate from Thomson Reuters. Its costs were higher than expected at the time that shoppers started spending more. The high-end retailer raised 2009 guidance to $1.83 to $1.88 EPS from a prior range of $1.50 to $1.65 EPS per share. But Thomson Reuters is already at $1.81 EPS. Shares are off on the news over valuations.  This was very active in after-hours trading last night, and this morning at 8:42 AM EST we have shares trading down 4.5% at $32.95 on only about 22,000 shares. In the after-hours session last night we saw some 809,000 shares trade hands and the price went out at $32.86. Average volume per day is about 4.8 million shares and the 52-week trading range is $6.61 to $36.52.
JON OGG