Why Aren’t We Seeing More Puts Trade In QCOM?

As the Nasdaq hammers to a fresh
26-month low, traders aren’t seeing panic here on the trading floors as much
as a complete lack of interest. I’m not saying there isn’t any trading
going on, but clearly institutional paper isn’t much interested in stepping
in front of the train anymore. They say the trend is your friend and while the
trend is friendly in terms of pointing us in the direction the market is
heading, it certainly isn’t friendly to any bulls, if there are any left.

    

If you count yourself among the few bulls left in today’s market, you
probably took some comfort from yesterday’s closing action and Wall
Street’s reaction to yesterday’s disaster d’ jour Brocade
Communications Systems

(
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and today’s offering: Sun
Microsystems

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. We tracked some outstanding bullish
action in SUNW call options this morning, as institutions seemed to want to
accumulate March 20 & 22 calls. 

     

Action in JDS Unipahse
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, EMC
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,
IBM
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and AOL
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options has been heavy on the bearish side,
with anywhere from 3:1, to 6:1 dollar-weighted money flowing into put options
versus calls. 

    

Bearish $W Put / Call Ratios:

 

 Call


 Put


 $W


 $W


Symbol

Volume

Volume

Call
Vol

Put
Vol

JDSU

      
15,886

      
30,839

      
49,437

    
333,922

EMC

      
11,522

      
13,081

      
35,533

    
171,454

IBM

    
  
17,912

      
24,545

      
69,583

    
174,174

AOL

      
23,425

      
58,927

      
76,230

    
274,509

(1010WallStreet.com
has licensed the use of Hamzei Analytics LLC proprietary options analytics)

If you are looking for
likely turnaround scenarios, you may want to take a look at Microsoft

(
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, Qualcomm
(
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and to a
lesser extent, Merck & Co. Inc.
(
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.
MSFT is up 1/2 (as of 12:45 pm) and QCOM, down 14 1/2, but 2 1/2 off its lows.
These ratios tell us that either the institutions are tired of selling in
these two issues, or that given their relationship to the rest of the market,
they are fairly priced. Especially in the case of QCOM, it is rare to see a
balanced dollar-weighted put/call ratio on such a down day. If you were
looking to catch a falling knife, at least the numbers are telling us that
this might be the one. 

    

Bullish $W Call/Put Ratios: 

 

 Call


 Put


 $W


 $W


Symbol

Volume

Volume

Call
Vol

Put
Vol

MSFT

      
28,198

      
20,317

      
99,540

      
92,229

QCOM

      
47,631

      
22,034

    
209,765

    
251,913

MRK

        
4,915

        
1,193

      
23,330

        
4,220

(1010WallStreet.com
has licensed the use of Hamzei Analytics LLC proprietary options analytics)