There is no news but the puts are pricing-in beaucoup volatility.
(read: expensive)
Here's MoneyBeat:
Morning MoneyBeat: The Mother of All Short Squeezes
You know it’s a big bull market when even some of the most disliked stocks muster huge rallies.
Electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA +0.97%, which in six months went from being on the verge of a liquidity crisis to reporting its first ever quarterly profit, jumped 14% yesterday in an otherwise ho-hum day in the markets. The stock is up 57% since last week’s earnings report.See also "Tesla is Forming the "Dreaded Eiffel Tower Formation" (TSLA)". Although a bit out of date, the stock was at $78.00 waaaay last...Friday, Alphaville points out how expensive it is to borrow the stock and more.
Solar-panel installer SolarCity SCTY -2.87% jumped 24% to kick off the week on more than eight times its average daily trading volume, according to FactSet. The stock is up 52% since Wednesday. Over the past week, online video service Netflix is up 11%, troubled retailer J.C. Penney Co. JCP +1.10% has risen 11%, solar-panel maker First Solar Inc. FSLR -0.65% has gained 16% and Internet radio company Pandora Media Inc. P +5.68% is up 12%.
The common denominator: All these stocks contain high levels of short interest, meaning investors have been heavily betting that their prices would fall sooner than later. For instance, more than 40% of Tesla’s free-floating shares are sold short.
When declines fail to materialize, these investors are often forced to switch their positions en masse, which pushes the price higher in what is known as a short squeeze.
“It just seems this move is something that’s been forced as opposed to fundamentally driven,” Ian Winer, director of trading at Wedbush Securities, said in a chat with MoneyBeat.
“It looks like there’s some kind of unwind going on either with a quant fund or a large hedge fund because the move is very synchronized among high short-interest names,” he said....MORE
