We updated the major short interest changes on some of the most active cult stocks that are from listed penny stocks and low priced stocks based on June 15 settlement date changes from May 28. Stock tickers are as follows:
Read full report at 24/7 Wall Street
BP plc (NYSE: BP) is under fire, as if that is not the understatement of the decade. While shares fell over 16% and were headed to close close to $29.00 today there was a hell of an options trading pattern in the PUT options. BP had explosive options trading down all the way in the PUT contracts under $20 and even down to $10 and lower…. This is the data shortly before the closing bell just on the JUNE-2010 CALLS alone:
If you look, that is a first for options trading. The prior open interest was listed as a whopping 5 contracts spread out among the $7.50 to $15.00 PUT strikes before today. Many of these are sure to be just extremely low probability high-risk vs. high-reward scenarios. Still, it will make you wonder….
JON C. OGG
Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ:RMBS) has been weak for part of the trading day, although some of this data was assumed to be known after a prior delay.
The company has confirmed that it has received notification from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ordering the rehearing of arguments to take place on October 7, 2010, following an initial hearing held in April 2010 in the cases with Hynix Semiconductor and Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU).
All Rambus’ general counsel noted was as follows: “In spite of this delay, we remain confident in our position. We will vigorously argue our right to defend and be fairly compensated for use of our patented innovations borne of years of work by Rambus scientists and engineers.â€
Rambus At 1:30 PM EST we have Rambus shares down 13% at $19.05 on 9.6 million shares, versus an average volume of less than 2 million shares and versus a trading range today of $18.93 â€" $22.75. Micron is up 3.15% at $8.81 on 16.7 million shares, which is actually fairly low trading volume for when it has big news.
JON C. OGG
TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO) is down after it is having to explain another patent office ruling…. It appears as though that decision that went against TiVo in favor of DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) and EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS) is holding.
TiVo shares in the minute before the closing bell are trading down 5.5% at $7.70 on over 10 million shares right at the 4PM Closing Bell, which is mostly from the headline effect of the last five or six minutes. DISH shares closed up unofficially by 0.25% at $19.97 and SATS shares closed up unofficially by 1.1% at $20.50. It seems that almost all hope for TiVo had eswcaped based on its poor performance and shares hitting a new 52-week low today.
TiVo offered the following statement on the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) decision.
“While TiVo is disappointed with this recent PTO office action, this is just one of several steps in the review process. We will continue to work with the PTO to explain the validity of the claims under review. It is important to note that TiVo received a “final action†holding several claims invalid during EchoStar’s first reexamination request at this juncture only to have the PTO ultimately uphold the validity of all claims of the patent.
Moreover, the PTO proceeding is separate and apart from the ongoing litigation against EchoStar and does not impact the current United States Court of Appeals en banc review of the district court’s finding of contempt against EchoStar and the related injunction.â€
DISH Network L.L.C., a subsidiary of DISH Network Corporation (Nasdaq:DISH â€" News), and EchoStar Technologies L.L.C., a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (Nasdaq: SATS) made the following statements:
“We are pleased the Patent and Trademark Office issued a Final Office Action maintaining its rejection of the software claims of TiVo’s patent. These software claims are the same claims that EchoStar was found to have infringed in the contempt ruling now pending for en banc review by the Federal Circuit. In the Final Office Action, three examiners of the PTO considered TiVo’s response and, in a detailed 32-page decision, finally concluded that the software claims were unpatentable in view of two prior art references.â€
JON C. OGG
Tellabs Inc. (NASDAQ: TLAB) is getting hit today due to a research call out of Barclays. The call is having enough impact that it became acting just like a stock rumor…. Barclays cut its price target down to $7.00 from $9.50, and shares are adjusting for the drop immediately as Barclays noted that AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) may be dropping much of its vendor business with Tellabs in a vendor consolidation move that could cost TLAB 5% to 10% of its revenues. At 2:00 PM EST we have shares down over 11% at $6.97 on more than 27 million shares.
Believe it or not, this is already nearly triple an average day’s volume of almost 9.5 million shares. The 52-week range is $4.96 to $9.45.
JON C. OGG
Traders are back to using stock options in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) for getting exposure to the price moves rather than the stock it seems. We ran a snapshot of the options trading versus the stock trading today at 2:00 PM and the data is pretty obvious that there seems to be speculators in the name around the news of better than expected iPad sales.  Much of the gains may also be on follow-on bullish trading from the $310 to $400 analyst call last week.
Using options for high-priced shares is no new event. But it is always interesting when you see the fully leveraged amount of options when converted into a share equivalent. This is even more interesting when you consider that options buyers are out speculating in contracts with a strike price of $300 and higher in the CALLS.
For the June-2010 Calls around 2:00 PM EST, Apple’s more active contracts in the $230 to $310 strikes in the CALL options was more than 95,000 contracts. The PUTS for June had over 47,000 contracts traded. On a fully leveraged basis, that is over 9.5 million shares equivalent in the Calls and 4.7 million shares in the Puts. Considering taht Apple was right at 20 million shares at 2:00 that is very active options trading.
Go out to July-2010 expirations and the most active calls was nearly 40,000 contracts traded, almost another 4 million shares equivalent on a fully leveraged basis. And in July, the active Call options went all the way out to $310 and $320 strike prices. That is obvious that traders and speculators are using leverage for upside exposure in the name at $1.00 to $2.00 per contract rather than paying over $260 per share.
Shares are now up 2.6% at $263.55 on the day.
JON C. OGG
