Trading Tips Blog

Traders are betting on a big move lower in Alibaba (BABA). Over 2,300 contracts traded against an open interest of 133, making for a 19-fold rise in volume. The contracts were for June 2022 $275 puts. With shares trading around $278, these at-the-money puts should move penny-for-penny higher as the stock goes lower. The option has 625 days until expiration. This kind of big, at-the-money, long-dated bet suggests someone expects a drop in the price soon, offering a relatively safe way to ...
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William Smith, a director at Kinder Morgan (KMI) picked up 7,000 shares last month. That followed on a buy the week before by company Chairman Richard Kinder, who bought 373,233 shares. While insiders have largely been buyers this year, the weak performance of the energy space means that these insider buys are currently at a loss, with a double-digit decline since the buys. That spells an opportunity for investors following the trades today. With the massive insider ownership and ongoing buying ...
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Every sector has its winners and losers. Amidst a rapidly changing economic landscape, even the fast-food companies haven’t been immune. But some companies have fared well, even grabbing market share during this tumultuous time. Companies in the quick-service space that have seen an increase in traffic have done so with innovative marketing and by adding new menu items, rather than removing and scaling back right now. That’s the view of the fast-food analyst at Stifel, who sees the biggest beneficiary of ...
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Energy stocks have been poor performers this year. While oil prices have recovered from their short-term, fear-driven move into negative territory earlier in the year, the price of crude is still low. Even worse, energy stocks are down 50-60 percent or more year-to-date as low prices and demand, to say nothing of new technologies, continue to threaten the industry. That makes a new M&A announcement in the space welcome news… and a potential trading opportunity as well. The proposed merger is between ...
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Christopher Swift, the Chairman and CEO of The Hartford Financial Services Group (HIG), picked up another $251,000 worth of shares recently. The buy added 6,975 shares in total, or a 2.4 percent increase in the CEO’s holdings. Insider data at the company shows a mix of buys and sells. Most interestingly, however, the same CEO was a big seller of shares a year ago, when they traded 40 percent higher. Although shares are down substantially over the past year, revenues are ...
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Traders are betting on a big move higher in The Gap (GPS). Over 7,700 contracts traded on the December 2020 $19 calls on shares. That’s a 55-fold rise in volume compared to the prior open interest of 141 contracts. Shares of The Gap trade at $17, so shares need to rise a bit over 10 percent in the next 80 days to move in-the-money. The option traded for $0.67, or $67 per contract, on average. Shares of the retail apparel firm have ...
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Stephen Neal, a director at Nvidia (NVDA) recently bought 450 shares of Nvidia. The purchase price came to just over $224,000. The director now owns just under 4,000 shares of the company. Neal has been a buyer of shares throughout the year, although this is his largest purchase year-to-date. Insiders have almost exclusively been sellers, as is typical of a large-cap tech company that issues large amounts of shares to employees. With the company’s latest product announcements and increased cryptocurrency mining demand, ...
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Railroad stocks are looking undervalued as traffic is holding up well. In fact, the latest measures are showing that rail volumes are back to pre-pandemic levels. Railroads ship goods all over the country, including consumer goods from ports, as well as commodities from farm states, making them an interesting hybrid play on all levels of the economy. With rail volume holding up so well, it’s a sign that the economy continues to recover. That’s what led Benchmark’s logistics analyst to upgrade ...
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