Monday’s Vital Data: Apple Inc. (AAPL), Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Tesla Inc. (TSLA)

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U.S. stock futures are trading higher this morning, as Wall Street’s rollercoaster continues. Fears of a trade war with China eased once again following encouraging comments from President Donald Trump over the weekend.

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“China will take down its Trade Barriers because it is the right thing to do. Taxes will become Reciprocal & a deal will be made on Intellectual Property,” Trump wrote in a tweet.

Heading into the open, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are up 0.71%, S&P 500 futures are higher by 0.58% and Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.74%.

Turning to the options pits, puts and calls were divided on Friday. Overall, about 18.1 million calls and 18.6 million puts changed hands on the session. The CBOE single-session equity put/call volume ratio jumped to 0.76. The 10-day moving average held at 0.68.

Friday’s options activity was very put heavy. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) attracted an unusual amount of put activity despite new iPhone feature leaks. Meanwhile, Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) was also less popular among call traders despite a looming earnings release. Finally, Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) was flooded with volume after TSLA stock posted its best week in four years.

Monday’s Vital Options Data: Apple Inc. (AAPL), Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Tesla Inc. (TSLA)

Apple Inc. (AAPL)

Are you ready for a new iPhone? Features for the next iteration of Apple’s flagship smartphone are beginning to leak into the wild, including a “touchless interface” and a curved screen. Most of these speculative features are down the road a bit, but the new OLED screens could arrive in the speculated iPhone X Plus — which is expected to his this year.

The news wasn’t enough to pull AAPL stock out of the broad-market morass on Friday, however. Options traders followed the stock lower, with calls making up a well-below-average 57% of the day’s take. More than 473,000 contracts traded on AAPL stock on Friday.

The weekly April 14 options open interest configuration is rather bullish, however. The April 14 series put/call OI ratio arrives at 0.55, with calls nearly doubling puts among options set to expire this Friday.

April 14 implieds are pricing in a potential move of about 2.5% for AAPL stock this week. The upper bound lies at $172.59 and the lower at $164.17.

Bank of America Corp. (BAC)

Earnings season kicks off this week, and Bank of America will join the fray next Monday. Analysts are expecting a profit of 59 cents per share on revenue of $23.05 billion. EarningsWhispers.com puts the whisper number higher at 61 cents per share.

But BofA isn’t seeing its typical call run up heading into earnings … at least not yet. Volume on Friday rose to 388,000 contracts, of which calls only accounted for 54%. The lack of call volume may be a reflection of already bullish leanings heading into earnings.

In fact, the April put/call OI ratio currently comes in at 0.57, with calls easily more popular than puts heading into Monday’s report. Implieds are pricing in a 5.6% move for BAC stock following earnings, placing the upper bound at $31.30 and the lower bound at $27.97.

Tesla Inc. (TSLA)

After suffering its worst decline since February 2010, dropping 12% at the end of March, TSLA stock came roaring back last week. The shares rallied 14.5%, their best weekly win in four years, after Tesla said it would not need to raise more capital this year.

The financial media was quick to denounce the proclamation, including the headline “Why Tesla Is Dumb to Think It Can Avoid a Capital Raise This Year” from TheStreet.com.

Tesla options traders were clearly just doubtful as The Street, with calls only making up 52% of yesterday’s total volume of 358,000 contracts. But short-term TSLA stock options traders are betting on a continuation of last week’s rally.

Specifically, the weekly April 14 put/call OI ratio rests at 0.64. Calls are clearly in command this week, and the out-of-the-money April 14 $340 call is the most popular.

Implieds don’t favor these extreme bulls, however, pricing in only a 6.2% move for TSLA stock this week. This places the upper bound at only $318.66, while the lower lies at $281.34.

As of this writing, Joseph Hargett held no positions on any of the aforementioned equities.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2018/04/mondays-vital-data-apple-inc-aapl-bank-of-america-corp-bac-and-tesla-inc-tsla/.

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