Skip to main content

Morning Update

Yesterday shares of Morgan Stanley closed down 6.6%, leading the broader market down as fears of a hung Italian parliament looked like an increasingly likely scenario. Morgan Stanley was one of the hardest hit stocks in the S&P 500 because of its exposure to European peripheral bonds. The stock saw extremely high option volume yesterday, with 9.5 puts trading for every call. One of the biggest trades of the day was the purchase of 20,700 Oct. 23 puts and sale of an equal number of Oct.18 puts. The trader paid a net debit of $1.79 for this put spread, which was put on when the stock was trading 22.75.

Time has shown that when the market is spooked over Europe, Morgan Stanley is one of the first stocks to be sold. This is because the company is seen as the weakest of the “too big to fail” banks. Last year the bank made a lot of progress and posted earnings of $1.59 a shares versus a net loss in 2011. Revenues also increased to $30.514 billion in 2012 from $28.555 billion in 2011. But traders yesterday sold the stock and made bearish bets on the stock because Morgan Stanley has $6.3 billion of total exposure to European peripherals, with Italy accounting for $3.2 billion of that. This sum should be able to be absorbed by Morgan Stanley in the worst case scenario, but that did not seem to matter in yesterday’s emotional trading session.

This put spread is a bet that Morgan Stanley will continue to sell off over the coming months. The spread will reach its maximum profit if Morgan Stanley is at or below 18.00. In this case the spread will worth $5.00 and the risk is limited in the trade to the $1.79 paid upfront for the options. This gives the spread an excellent risk/reward profile and makes it an interesting portfolio hedge trade since Morgan Stanley is likely to see more downside if fears over Europe continue to grow. The

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morning Update

ECB officials said last night that ECB President Mario Draghi will likely wait to hear Germany’s Constitutional Court’s ruling on the EFSM before publicly unveiling his plans. Many were hoping Draghi would unveil his plan after the ECB’s September 6th meeting, but this is becoming increasingly unlikely. Today Reuters is reporting that Germany is the latest European nation to begin studying the possible impact of a Greek exit from the Euro. This comes ahead of Chancellor Merkel’s meeting with Greece’s Prime Minister today. Merkel has repeatedly said that she would like Greece to remain in the common currency, though clearly someone in Germany believes a Greek exit is possible outcome worth preparing for. This morning US new durable goods orders numbers we released for July, coming in at a gain of 4.2% M/M. Though this was strong than expected, it was primarily driven by strong aircraft sales. Non-defense orders excluding aircraft were down a sharp 3.4% M/M versus a 0.2% decline expecte...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is the KCJ Foreshadowing a 2008 Repeat?

The CBOE Correlation Index (KCJ) is close to the lowest level we have seen since it was first listed in 2007. The KCJ measures the implied movement of the S&P 500 components options, compared to the implied movement of the S&P 500 index options. Simply put, the higher the number, the more likely all stocks are going to move together. Conversely, a low number will be characterized by sector rotation, and flat markets; one sector moves higher, another moves lower.  (Source: Access Hollywood) Correlation, for lack of a better term, is correlated with volatility. Not surprisingly, 30-day S&P 500 historical volatility is near the low level of 6.5%. Currently at 33.5, KCJ is sitting close to rock bottom, lower than where it was in 2007, (but not lower than where Lindsay Lohan was in 2007).  So far this year, the market has been able to grind higher, characterized by leadership in FANG(Facebook Apple/Amazon, Netflix, Google) and sector rotation. A...
Post a Comment
Read more