The Associated Press
Its shares rose 7 cents to $12.01 in after-hours trading after closing Wednesday at $11.94, down 11 cents from a day earlier.
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US Dollar Bullish Index (NYSE: UUP) has gne very active…. It has traded 109,000 calls early on with huge buying at November $23, 96% bought offer side, and already nearly 10X average call volume. The action comes ahead of the FOMC decision which will be a USD moving event, and this action is looking for a USD rally from the comments, which would likely result in a market sell-off later today, something to be worried about, or at least hedged for, as the positions could easily be tied to other market bets, but the action is worth noting.
-JOE KUNKLE, OptionsHawk.com
American Capital, Ltd. (NASDAQ: ACAS) gained 18% to $3.20 in pre-market as one of the large percentage gainers. We have seen some 375,000 shares as of 8:46 AM EST and the average volume is 6.2 million shares. The news was that it lost -$0.13 in non-GAAP EPS and had a net income of $0.12 EPS. The company also reached an agreement with its lending committee to restructure its revolving line of credit facility. The company said the terms may allow it to restructure $2.4 billion in unsecured debt. This stock was up as much as 29% around the $3.50 mark earlier. -JON OGG
We have already covered in depth how the European Union may have thrown in another roadblock on the Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA). This has caused over 1.04 million shares to trade hands in JAVA stock as of 5:18 PM EST. The stock closed at $8.35 today, and the stock is still down 2.6% at $8.13. At one point after the news broke we had as much as an 8% drop.
Human Genome Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: HGSI) was lower this morning and had been off our radar as a result after yesterday’s huge moves. Yet at 1:30 PM EST we have just hit the virtual double on average daily volume. Shares are up 8% at $27.34 on about 16.2 million shares versus and average volume of over 8 million shares. This one traded 13 million shares on each last Thursday and Friday ahead of the event, but yesterday’s volume was a whopping 41+ million shares for a 35% gain. We have also seen over 60,000 CALLS trade for NOV-2009 alone, which is 6 million shares on a fully leveraged basis. This is a fraction of yesterday’s volume but this yet another 52-week high today. Shares are at $27.48 and the intra-day high was $27.52. Yesterday’s high was a 52-week high as well, and that was at $26.21. For reference, that is a high back to early 2002.
JON C. OGG
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) has seen a flurry of PUT OPTIONS activity today. It has traded about 123,000 puts and 17,589 calls as of 11:20am, with put volume nearly 3X average daily volume already. Of this volume more than 75% of it has been bought at the offer, bearish bets. The majority of the volume is due to large ratio put spreads in January, as the $26/$21 ratio put spread is being bought, 31,000 $26 puts against 62,000 $21 puts. The action comes a day after large bearish bets were being made in June for the Financials (XLF), of which Wells Fargo is a large component. The main worry with Wells Fargo is that it will need to raise capital in the near future as it is attempting to rely on earnings to repay the TARP. The Company will be presenting this Friday in Boston at 10am at the Bank Analysts Association. The ratio put spread is also a bet against volatility, although Wells has traded in a very tight range for months and is already less volat ile than its counterparts.
-JOE KUNKLE, OptionsHawk.com
We have already covered the news that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) is acquiring Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (NYSE: BNI). But this news has many of the other railroad stocks popping early on the news. At 8:12 AM EST we have CSX Corp. (NYSE: CSX) up 8% at $46.30 on over 200,000 shares. Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC) is up almost 7% at $49.85 on about 68,000 shares. Kansas City Southern (NYSE: KSU) is up 11% at $26.75,but on little volume. Buffett also owns a stake of Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP), which is up over 6% at $58.71. We’d expect that Buffett will sell that Union Pacific stake and you can likely forget about Buffett buying another rail player because of antitrust issues that could come into play. This acquisition does et the valuation bar higher for the sector, but it would tale other players to buy these besides Buffett. -JON OGG
There was elevated options activity in the Financial Select Sector SPDR (NYSE: XLF) June put action is picking up as financials sell off and 253,000 puts trade against 81,000 calls in the ETF. Large trades include a 20,000 contract June $11/$10 put spread and a buyer of 20,000 June $14 puts. March $14/$11 ratio put spreads are also active on the day. Near days end 407,000 puts have traded including a 3:35 pm June $14/$10 ratio put spread for 38,500X77,000 contracts looking for volatility to decrease and shares to head lower in the next 8 months. Large components include BAC, JPM, and WFC.
Joe Kunkle, OptionsHawk.com
Research-in-Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) shares are weak in a strong tape, down 5.4%, due to a downgrade to Sell at Citigroup. Implied volatility is up 10% on the day and option traders are active with 93,000 calls and 59,886 puts trading just two hours into trading. The volume has already surpassed the average daily volume and is mixed between buyers and sellers in both the calls and puts. One notable bullish trade was a new opening buyer at the $0.24 offer for 15,000 March $100 calls that are way out of the money, a lotto ticket type bet. Most of the other action is retail traders with some looking for a continued move lower and others buying on the dips looking for shares to be defended. Shares are now trading at a PEG of 0.8X and are historically cheap on an earnings basis for the Blackberry maker.
Joe Kunkle, OptionsHawk.com
Dendreon Corp. (NASDAQ: DNDN) is trading higher on word from the company that it has filed its new drug application with the FDA for PROVENGE to treat prostate cancer. The notion of the filing is not new, although many were not expecting this filing to be submitted until later in November or in December. At 8:44 AM EST we have seen 250,000 shares trade hands and the last print seen was up 6.8% at $27.00 after a $25.27 close on Friday. Average volume is almost 3 million shares, but it is usually much higher trading volume on days with news.
JON C. OGG