SOMEONE IS GOING TO JAIL
According to Bloomberg call options trading in Perot Systems jumped more than to 225 times the 4 week average just days before the company was bought out this morning by Dell:
Calls volume climbed to 2,539 contracts, or 242 times the four-week average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Only 10 puts traded that day, the data show. The shares, which rose 0.1 percent to $17.91 on Sept. 18, surged 65 percent to $29.62 at 11:03 a.m. New York time today.
The last session’s most-active options were October $20 calls, which gained 22 percent to 55 cents Sept. 18 and jumped 1,645 percent to $9.60 today. Those contracts, which expire Oct. 16, are also the most widely owned options, accounting for about half of all 10,353 Perot contracts. Last week’s call volume of 8,279 contracts is almost double that of the preceding three months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Yet something that you may want to consider in your 8 hour daily coffee breaks is the following. We present the option activity in Perot calls last week. Over 2,500 Oct $20 calls were purchased at about $1. The same option is now worth $9.60. The result: an approximately $2.2 million profit in the four days since the accumulation of the options started on September 15 by whoever the party(ies) that were tipped off about this deal. (We are ignoring the $17.50 strikes which also showed suspicious volume early in the month).
It’s safe to say that the risk trade is back! Even if that risk involves 10 to 20 in a 6X3 with your new roommate Bronson. On the bright side, it’s good to see that someone is doing some insider trading because lord knows corporate insiders aren’t…..
Source: ZH, Bloomberg





TPC, please. If someone went to jail that would mean the SEC would actually do its job, which we know it doesn’t. Damn, I wish I put all my money in those 20 dollar calls on Friday though
I’m still waiting to hear who bought the mysterious, deep out of the money puts on Bear two weeks before that implosion…is this the new norm of acceptable activity?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aGmG_eOp5TjE&refer=home
Remember this one?
More accurate, “Someone should go to jail”.
The SEC is notoriously slow to act on these cases. My guess is that the culprits have 6-9 months to buy their yachts and leave the country….