Updates on ANF and CRM PEA Plays

Updates on ANF and CRM PEA Plays

Here are the trades we placed for ANF this week:

May 21, 2013  Trade Alert –  PEA Picker  Portfolio – LIMIT ORDERS

I wrote a Seeking Alpha article about this trade if you care to see it – How To Play The Abercrombie & Fitch May Earni…  In the article I suggested buying June options for the long side but have since noticed that the July options offer more value and have a 6-point lower IV than the June options.  I have also expanded the break-even range to about 15% on the downside and 8% on the upside at the cost of making a very small gain if the stock falls by just a couple of dollars.  I have assumed that IV of the July options will fall by 8 (from 48 to 38).  These trades are being made with ANF trading about $54.25.

BTO 6 ANF Jul-13 52.5 calls (ANF130720C52.5)
BTO 6 ANF Jul-13 52.5 puts (ANF130720P52.5) for a debit limit of $7.25  (buying a straddle)

If that executes:

STO 3 ANF May4-13 48 put (ANF130524P48)
STO 3 ANF May4-13 56 call (ANF130524C56) for a credit limit of $2.11  (selling a strangle)

STO 3 ANF May4-13 49 put (ANF130524P49)
STO 3 ANF May4-13 57 call (ANF130524C57) for a credit limit of $1.93  (selling a strangle)

May 23, 2013  Trade Alert –  PEA Picker  Portfolio

We have a weak spot in the risk profile graph curve and this little trade will fix it:

BTO 2 ANF Jul-13 52.5 puts (ANF130720P52.5)
STO 2 ANF May4-13 52.5 puts (ANF130524P52.5) for a debit of $1.37  (buying a calendar)

When the announcement was made, the stock fell sharply by about $5.50, or about 10% below it was when we placed our spreads.

Both of the strangles that we sold on the first day essentially expired worthless (we bought back the expiring short options for a minimal price (paying no commission on them at thinkorswim).  Those strangles served to reduce the cost of the original straddle we bought from $7.25 to about $5.25.  When we sold that straddle for $5.72, we made a gain of about $240 after commissions on an initial investment of $3150, or 7.6%.

A significant factor in the disappointing gain was that IV fell to 34 compared to the 38 I was expecting.  This meant we got lower prices than we hoped for when we sold the July options.

It wasn’t a great gain, but it did manage to continue our winning streak of these PEA Plays using our Expectation Model from 8 consecutive wins to 9.

And our second PEA Play this week: SalesForce.com (CRM)

This was an interesting challenge because our Expectation Model predicted that since expectations were so high, a lower price would come about after the announcement.  This prediction was countered by the strong record of the stock moving higher after announcing, even when earnings did not best estimates.  Over the last four quarters the stock had moved higher an average of 6.7% after announcing, so we were a little scared to place all our money on a weaker market. 

May 21, 2013  Trade Alert –  PEA Picker  Portfolio – LIMIT ORDERS

I wrote a Seeking Alpha article about this play if you are interested – How To Play The Salesforce.com Earnings Annou…

In this article I suggested buying June options for the long side but I have since noticed that the July options are less than $.50 more expensive and seem to have tighter bid-ask ranges.  These spreads should make a gain in either direction as long as the stock fluctuates less than 10% in either direction after the announcement, assuming that IV of the July options will only fall by 8 (from 36 to 28):

BTO 8 CRM Jul-13 50 puts (CRM130720P50)
STO 8 CRM May4-13 47.5 puts (CRM130524P47.5) for a debit limit of $2.47  (buying a diagonal)

BTO 5 CRM Jul-13 50 calls (CRM130720C50)
STO 5 CRM May4-13 50 calls (CRM130524C50) for a debit limit of $.76  (buying a calendar) 

May 23, 2013  Trade Alert –  PEA Picker  Portfolio

When we placed our trades near the open on Tuesday, the stock was trading about $2 higher than it is now.  In order to continue have a break-even range that extends about 10% in both directions, we need to establish some downside protection.  Fortunately, we can take off some of our diagonal spreads for a gain, and use the proceeds to add some calendar spreads at lower strike prices:

BTC 3 CRM May4-13 47.5 puts (CRM130524P47.5)
STC 3 CRM Jul-13 50 puts (CRM130720P50) for a credit of $2.62  (selling a diagonal)

BTO 3 CRM Jul-13 44 puts (CRM130720P44)
STO 3 CRM May4-13 44 puts (CRM130524P44) for a debit of $.98  (buying a calendar)

BTO 3 CRM Jul-13 42 puts (CRM130720P42)
STO 3 CRM May4-13 42 puts (CRM130524P42) for a debit of $.85  (buying a calendar)

BTO 3 CRM Jul-13 40 puts (CRM130720P40)
STO 3 CRM May4-13 40 puts (CRM130524P40) for a debit of $.64  (buying a calendar

After the announcement (when the company pretty much exceeded estimates, the stock fell a whopping $5.50, or about 10%.  In this instance our Expectations Model seemed to be a much better predictive value than the historical pattern of price changes after announcing.

The original diagonal spread we bought for $2.47 was sold for $2.65 (its intrinsic value was $2.50 and there was some remaining time premium value in the July 50 puts).  We lost on our the call calendar we placed just in case the stock moved higher (selling it for $.29 vs. our cost of $.76).  However, we gained on all three put calendar spreads, selling them for $1.32, $1.61, and $1.12.

In total, we had invested $2301 plus commissions of $52 after selling 3 of the diagonals for a small gain.  We had a gain of $371 less commissions of $41 for a net gain of $330 or 14% for the week.

IV of the July options fell much further than we expected, all the way to 30 compared to our estimate of 40, so even a 14% could have been much greater if the 60-day-out options had behaved as they did a quarter ago after earnings.

These were two of our lowest-netting PEA Plays but they did keep the string of successful trades going.  The portfolio that started out 7 weeks ago with $5000 has now had $6000 withdrawn from it and there is $5277 remaining in cash. 

We expect to invest only half our cash next week in a Joy Global (JOY) PEA Play.  JOY is the only company with weekly options that is reporting next week.