Today’s tickers: CSCO, DELL, JCI & RRR
CSCO – Cisco Systems, Inc. – Shares in the maker of routers and switches were on a tear this week, rallying as much as 9.3% over Monday’s open to a high of $16.76 on Thursday. The stock had been in positive territory to start the final trading session of the week, but have since slipped 0.30% to stand at $16.70 as of 11:50 am in New York. Activity in put options set to expire one week from today suggest some traders are positioned to see Cisco’s shares continue to lose ground in the near term. Meanwhile, longer-dated calls indicate investors expect shares to run up against resistance at the $17.00 and $18.00 levels through April 2012 expiration.
Investors predicting a near-term pullback in the price of the underlying purchased roughly 2,600 puts at the Oct. ’14 $16 strike for an average premium of $0.10 per contract. Put buyers profit at expiration next week should shares in Cisco Systems drop 4.8% from the current price of $16.70 to breach the effective breakeven point on the downside at $15.90. Looking out to the April 2012 contract, it appears traders are selling large blocks of call options. Investors may be selling the calls outright, or writing the contracts against long stock positions. The heaviest volume was observed at the April 2012 $18 strike, where more than 10,000 calls were sold for an average premium of $1.25 each. It looks like the largest single block sold 7,481 times. The investor responsible for the sizeable position keeps the $1.25 premium received on the trade as long as shares in Cisco fail to exceed $18.00 at expiration in April. Cisco’s shares last traded above $18.00 back in April 2011. Options implied volatility on the stock rose 14.7% to…
