Today’s tickers: AMTD, TPX & DKS
AMTD - TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. – Large bullish bets in August expiry options on online broker, TD Ameritrade, are trading for a third consecutive week, with shares in the name up 11% since the beginning of March to stand at $20.72 as of midday in New York on Friday. Big prints in Aug. $23 strike calls attracted some attention on February 28th, after roughly 40,000 of those contracts were purchased for a premium of $0.25 apiece. The following week on March 5th, another 40,000 contracts changed hands at the Aug. $23 strike at a premium of $0.35 each. This morning, it looks like another 20,000 of the Aug. $23 strike call options were purchased at a premium of $0.65 apiece. The contracts purchased at the end of February have more than doubled in value and the calls picked up last week have appreciated substantially as of the time of this writing. Continued gains in the price of the underlying ahead of August expiration may generate additional paper profits on these positions. Upside calls purchased on AMTD this morning make money at August expiration as long as shares in the online broker surge 14% to exceed the breakeven price of $23.65.
TPX - Tempur-Pedic International, Inc. – Shares in premium mattress maker, Tempur-Pedic, jumped 9.0% to $46.44 on Friday morning after the Federal Trade Commission cleared the company’s planned acquisition of Sealy Corp. in a transaction valued at approximately $1.3 billion. The sharp move in the price of the underlying shares sparked heavy trading traffic in TPX options at the start of the session; overall volume is above 13,000 contracts as of 11:00 a.m. ET, versus the stock’s average daily volume of around 11,750 contracts. One strategist appears to be taking a bearish stance on the stock through April expiration, with shares in TPX having increased 45% year-to-date and more than 120% since June of 2012. It looks like the trader initiated a ratio put spread, buying 300 puts at the April…
