Thursday, January 6, 2011

Betting on Citigroup to Trade Above $5.00 By February 19th (C)

 UPDATE: "Citigroup Q4 Could Make or Break the Bank" (C)"
Original post:
Not me, an options spread trader. I'm unidirectional.
[sounds religious -ed]
The stock closed yesterday at $4.97, up 7 cents on the day.
From Schaeffer's Research:
Option volume is a little heavier than usual on Citigroup Inc. (C), with roughly 975,000 contracts changing hands so far -- just north of C's average daily option volume of 826,000 contracts. Call options account for most of the day's activity, with about 792,000 of these bullishly oriented contracts crossing the tape.

C price chartDrilling down on the day's major block trades, one speculator
constructed a long call spread by purchasing 50,000 February 5 calls, and simultaneously selling 50,000 February 5.50 calls. By building this back-month spread, the trader is revealing that he expects C to rise above stubborn resistance at the $5 level by the time February-dated options expire....MORE