Big Printin’ – Symantec (SYMC)

by Dan August 22, 2016 3:23 pm • Big Printin'

The largest single stock options trade today appears to be a bullish roll in Symantec (SYMC). Shortly after noon, when the stock was trading $23.70, a trader sold to close 30,000 Jan17 24 calls at $1.30 ($3.9 million in premium) and bought to open 30,000 Jan17 26 calls for 61 cents to open ($1.83 million in premium)… and with the options transaction bought 100,000 shares of stock (this likely to assist the market maker to price and hedge the trade that had about a 20 delta.

Shares of SYMC are up 40% on the year, with most of those gains coming since their June 13th announcement that they were buying BlueCoat Systems (BCSI) for $4.7 billion:

[caption id="attachment_65825" align="aligncenter" width="600"]From Bloomberg From Bloomberg[/caption]

The positive investor sentiment has caused some sell side research analysts to get a bit more bullish on the stock with Citi upgrading the shares to a Buy last week with a $26.50 target.  If you thought SYMC could continue its run, back towards the double top highs from 2013 / 2015 just below $28 then it might make sense to look to defined risk strategies like long calls or call calendars as a pullback after this run could be painful for any late entries:

[caption id="attachment_65826" align="aligncenter" width="600"]SYMC 5yr chart from Bloomberg SYMC 5yr chart from Bloomberg[/caption]