Today’s tickers: HAL, CSTR, AMAG & FXI, SPY
HAL – Halliburton Co. – A sharp fall in Thursday’s session for oil services and sloppy cement-mixer Halliburton has not gained much traction at the end of the week. The stock today trades on both sides of unchanged and is currently at $31.71. While the prospects for additional liability are pretty much set out on the table following a report showing it provided BP with an unstable cement mix to surround the Macondo oil well, BP didn’t notice or attempt to rectify the error. Halliburton’s November puts are being sold as the stock stabilizes while the smart trade appears to be selling well out of the money call options expiring in April. Around 4,000 call options at the $36 strike price have traded to the bid telling us that an investor is taking a long stock and short call position or is simply just writing premium. The 52-week high at $35.89 remains a tall order after yesterday’s news making the short position in the calls look like a viable proposition.
CSTR – Coinstar Inc. – Coin and DVD-rental-machine operator Coinstar provided a pop for its shares after reporting surging revenues thanks to growth in its DVD-machine operations located in supermarket chains around the nation. Investors were primed for a dip in profits but were left smiling by a 42% increase in revenues on the movie-rental side. Call options on the stock were equally hot property on Friday after the share price jumped by 23% to $56.86. Formerly out-of-the-money call options expiring in November and which were trading at $1.50 yesterday traded all the way up to $8.00 a piece today despite a 20% slide in options implied volatility, typical after earnings. The share price surge put calls at six option strikes in-to-the-money on Friday. Compared to a 10-day average today’s overall options volume stacks up to more than five-times the norm.
