When we first tagged ISRG back on May 6th, the stock was just making its way down to its 3-year low, which came a couple of sessions later at 346.46. From that point, we saw a powerful uptrend that carried the stock back up to 426.43 (Jun 27th). It allowed us to play the options chain quite effectively over the course of several weeks.
Following that major run, we’ve seen some consolidation, coming back to the $380-level just recently, and currently, the stock is pressing new highs in premarket trading, to the tune of $444.
We did mention a long-term interest in the Aug.-Oct. $420-440 Calls back in June, and that insight is now paying off bigtime.
Petroleo Brasiliero S.A. PBR -Options
When we looked in on PBR on Monday, we were patting ourselves on the back for some excellent picks of last week’s $16.50 and $17 Weekly Calls, mentioning that we’d stick with the same ideas to begin this week.
It has turned out to be another great call on our part; just look at the action in those weekly calls during yesterday’s session:
The 16.50’s ran from .25 to 1.07, a possible intraweek gain of up to 328% while the $17 Calls surged from .13 up to .75, a 477% move. This was just one of many, many times that we’ve used the PBR options chain to our extreme advantage this year.
New Options-Trading Ideas
As our regulars have undoubtedly noticed, a good portion of our focus these days goes to options trading. We’ve become quite adept at spotting trends and using them to our benefit, and we’ve got a couple of new potential plays to add to the mix this morning.
Alcoa, Inc. AA
Alcoa has been building one beast of a chart over the past few months, and there looks to be no end in sight. We may be able to use this strong uptrend to leverage ourselves some nice gains out of AA Options. Specifically, the 08/16 $17 Calls, which closed at .44 yesterday after having traded in a range from .25-.48 on the day.
Yum! Brands, Inc. YUM
YUM got beat up recently, falling off a cliff at the $83-area, and yesterday was the first session since that the stock has found some support, down around $74. Our options idea here is to potentially utilize the rebound for some quick-strike gains. We’ll be monitoring the 08/08 $75 Calls, which closed at .82 yesterday.
Extended Watchlist:
DRL, DARA, TLM, PLUG, FCEL, POWR, PBYI