Dividend Play

NYLD 5% yield. Bounced off it's low after earnings miss due to wind power projections...

Crime Doesn't Pay--Well It Does, but...

The U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday they filed charges against a total of 32 people who allegedly took part in a scheme to hack newswire services and trade on information that was pending release to the public.

According to federal officials, the defendants made a combined $100 million in illegal profits. The group includes two Ukrainian men who are believed to be the hackers, plus 30 other people from the U.S. and elsewhere who made the stock trades.

The SEC initially filed fraud charges under seal on Aug. 10 in the U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J. The Justice Department announced criminal charges against several of the same defendants, including the alleged hackers, Ivan Turchynov and Oleksandr Ieremenko.

The Ukrainian men are said to have led the scheme over a five-year period. They hacked at least two newswire services, stealing hundreds of corporate earnings announcements before they were released.

The two hackers created a secret location on the Internet to send stolen data to traders in Russia, the Ukraine, Malta, Cyprus, France, and three U.S. states: Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania. In some cases, the traders shared a portion of their illicit profits with the hackers.

The SEC described one case that occurred on May 1, 2013. The hackers stole a news release from an unnamed company that cut its earnings and revenue guidance. Traders began shorting the stock and selling CFDs just 10 minutes after the announcement was sent to a newswire. Within a 36-minute timeframe, they reaped $511,000 in trading profits once the announcement was made public and the company's shares dropped.

GMCR & SODA

Lot's of call buying for 7 Aug in both names, both are supposed to report earnings on 5 August.

CIBR ETF

A new Cyber Security ETF has now opened on the NASDAQ: CIBR trading under $20 today.  The top five holdings are:

 

·  Intralinks Holdings Inc. (NYSE: IL)

·  Proofpoint Inc. (NASDAQ: PFPT)

·  Imperva Inc. (NYSE: IMPV)

·  Science Applications International Corp. (NYSE: SAIC)

·  Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NYSE: PANW)

This is different than the well-known HACK ETF.   This is an opportunity to hold two-security ETFs that aren’t necessarily duplicative of each other.

 

HACK did extremely well in gaining asset base quickly.

 

Happy Trading…

Blackberry (BBRY)

Blackberry is acquiring AtHoc. This is significant as the DoD uses AtHoc and doesn't plan to stop anytime soon. Long-shot but this is an opportunity for BBRY to integrate this capability with BBRY devices and if strategically thought about open some doors for future mass-notification business. Even if it's app development for cross-platform use...

We are long Jan 17 $10 Calls

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-22/blackberry-acquires-emergency-mass-messaging-startup-athoc?cmpid=yhoo

Happy Trading...

FITBit

FIT came on the radar screen not too long ago and listed as a buy in some articles. The short question was asked and it appears short interest has risen as the stock has risen, see WSJ link below.

Now, while it is a good thing to do whatever it is you need to do to be motivated to exercise it has been shown that these devices are largely inaccurate. I'm not sure that bothers me as they aren't used to become elite athletes and the inaccuracy isn't leading you to not exercise. The market for wearable tech is growing and the tech will only get better with time, so what to do. I would look for a pull-back and then buy at-the-money-calls for 6-months out. Or, if you are comfortable owning, buy the equity and sell covered calls as it rallies. Just go out-of-the-money or risk a high probability of having the stock called away.

blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/07/17/short-sellers-circle-shake-shack-fitbit-and-etsy/?mod=yahoo_hs

Happy Trading!

GOOG

If you search the blog for our plays in Google over the past you will see we had some successful strategies. One was to buy the 600$ calls around three-months out when GOOG dropped below 600 and sell when it rose above 600. This strategy was fairly repeatable. Now, given what GOOG is doing analyst have bumped the target to north of 800. We are looking at purchasing 6-month out or more $700 strikes.

See the link below for more info...

finance.yahoo.com/news/key-analyst-sees-over-20-183846614.html

New Questions

I have a question about contracts to Jan 16 or Jan 17.  If you are in the money and the whole year goes by but you have 2 more months left in the contract - do you start losing money?
 
I was thinking about FIT.  It's hot right now and it might have a good ER.  My only concern is that, I think they are going to short this out.  What do you think?