In the few weeks before a company makes its quarterly earnings announcement, option prices make some predictable changes and the stock usually edges up in advance of the announcement. There are several ways you can take advantage of these changes to pick up some nice trading profits using stock options. Today I would like to share some trades I placed today on Starbucks (SBUX).

Terry

Some Ways to Play the SBUX Earnings Announcement

SBUX is slated to announce earnings on April 21st. Implied Volatility (IV) for pre-announcement weeks is 20 and it pops up to 25 for the Apr4-15 series which expires just after the announcement. The next two weekly series also have an IV of 25 which is likely to fall to 20 after the announcement.

SBUX has a record of coming very close to meeting earnings expectations. For the four quarters, there has never been a difference of more than a penny between what the market expected from the announcement and the actual earnings figure. Consequently, the stock has not fluctuated very much after the announcement.

Many times, in the weeks or days leading up to the announcement, hope for a better-than-expected announcement often causes the stock to tick a little higher.

SBUX closed last week at $58.36. I think there is a good chance that it might drift up to the $60 as we head into the announcement week. There are several ways you could play the tendency for the stock to move higher just before that time. One way would be to leg into a calendar spread by buying a further-out 60 call and wait for the stock to move up before completing the short side. If it does move up, you would get the calendar spread at a very attractive price (possible even at a credit which means you would be assured of a gain no matter what happens to the stock after the announcement). The downside is the possibility that it does not move higher, and time starts eating away at your long call before you can complete the spread.

Today, with SBUX trading about $58.60, I placed an order to buy SBUX May1-16 calls. I paid $1.12 ($112 per contract) plus $1.25 commission at the rate paid by Terry’s Tips subscribers at thinkorswim (if you are paying more than this as commission rate, you might consider opening an account at this brokerage – see the offer below).

A second way to play it would be to buy a May1-16 – Apr-16 60 call calendar spread. This is the trade I made today:

Buy to Open 5 SBUX May1-16 60 calls (SBUX160506C69)
Sell to Open 5 SBUX Apr-16 60 calls (SBUX160415C60) for a debit of $.68 (buying a calendar)
The Apr-16 series expires in the week before the announcement, so you could roll into the higher-IV Apr4-16 series when it expires on April 15. An at-the-money call with a week of remaining life when IV is 25 is about $.80, so if you are lucky and the stock is trading near $60, you could sell the Apr4-16 60 calls for more than you paid for the original calendar, and you would still own a calendar with two weeks of remaining life.

A third way to play the expectation rise would be to buy a May1-16 – Apr4-16 60 calendar spread. This way you would be selling the high-IV series now rather than waiting. Here is the spread I placed today:

Buy to Open 10 SBUX May1-16 60 calls (SBUX160506C69)
Sell to Open 10 SBUX Apr4-16 60 calls (SBUX160422C60) for a debit of $.24 (buying a calendar)

If the stock ends up at $60 after the announcement, a two-week at-the-money call at an IV of 20 would be worth about $.60 so you could about double your money after commissions. Of course, you are betting that the stock does not make a big move after the announcement. Such a move is always possible even though SBUX does not have a history of big moves after announcing (average change 2.6%, or about $1.50). The attractive thing about this spread is that it costs so little that risk is quite limited. There will always be some value to a call with two weeks of remaining life, and $.24 isn’t much to have to cover.

I will report back to you on how these three trades ended up. Hopefully, we might find out which of the three choices works out. Most companies report earnings each quarter, and there will be lots of opportunities to use these trading ideas on other companies you might like.

 

Lots of people like GM. It is one of the most popular stocks in some of the largest mutual funds in America. Investors seem to like the 5.2% dividend it pays. Today I will show you how you could make 8 times that much with an options bet that will net 45% even if the stock doesn’t go up by a penny.

Terry

How to make 45% with a Safe Bet on GM

First, an update on my last 3 trade recommendations. Five weeks ago, I suggested a trade that would make 66% after commissions if Facebook (FB) closed at any price above $97.50 on March 18, 2016. FB is now trading above $106 and that looks like a sure winner when it closes out a week from today.

A little over 3 weeks ago I suggested a similar trade on Costco (COST) when it was trading at $147.20. This one would make 40% after commissions if COST finishes at any price above $145 next Friday (March 18th). It is now trading near $152. This one also looks like a sure winner.

The third suggestion was made two weeks ago, and it involved Nike (NKE) which according to both the Nasdaq and EarningsWhispers.com would announce earnings on March 17, just before the Mar-16 options expired. Now it appears that my sources were both wrong. The announcement (still unconfirmed) will probably not take place until the following week. We had expected that our long calls would benefit from rising expectations before the announcement, but we should have bought calls with a week of additional life to take advantage of that possibility. Even worse, the stock has fallen about $3 since we placed the spread, and it looks like it will end up being a loss unless the stock rallies strongly next week.

Today, I am suggesting a play on General Motors (GM). There is a lot to like about GM. For the second year in a row, Barron’s ranked it as one of its five favorite stocks for the coming year. Their 2015 prognosis was not a good one as the stock fell from about $35 to $30 in 2015 in spite of 5% higher sales and earnings. Barron’s second try seems to be more likely to work out.

In its January earnings announcement, GM exceeded expectations all around, authorized a new $5.5 billion buyback, and raised guidance. The market hardly budged, apparently worried about GM’s Chinese sales (which had gained 12% in 2015) and some concerns about price cutting from rivals.

The company sells at a P/E ratio of only 5.2 and pays a well-covered dividend of 5.2%. There are very few other companies out there selling so low with such a dividend.

Kevin O’Leary, “Mr. Wonderful” of Shark Tank, in a recent AARP interview, said that his mother told him never to buy a stock that didn’t pay a dividend, and that over the past 40 years, 71% of the returns on the S&P came from dividends, not capital appreciation. Dividends are clearly important these days, mostly because they usually provide a solid floor for the stock price. When the overall market fell in the first few weeks of 2015, GM edged briefly down to the $28 level, and quickly recovered back above $30 where it stands now.

A recent Seeking Alpha article makes a compelling case that GM could double in value over the next 4 years – General Motors: Multiple Catalysts Should Double Your Money By 2020. One the biggest reasons the author cited was GM’s fast-growing finance arm which has so far not contributed anything to its parent’s coffers, but which could be soon passing on $1 billion a year or so.

I am not convinced that GM is destined to move significantly higher over the next few years, but I am comfortable believing that the combination of a high dividend rate, low P/E, a large buyback program, stable sales, and the finance arm possibility suggest that the stock is quite unlikely to fall very much from its current level.

I am suggesting a bet that GM will be at least $28 when the Jan-17 options expire on January 20, 2017. If that is true, this spread would make 45% on your money after commissions. That means it could fall about 8% from where it is now ($30.50), and the same 40% gain would result.

In the same AARP article, the Sharks recommended that you should expect to make 4% to 6% on your money each year over time. It seems to me that it makes sense to put some of your money, at least a small portion, in something that could make many times that much if the risk level is reasonable.

I made this trade in my personal account yesterday to confirm that this price was available:

Buy To Open 10 GM Jan-17 25 puts (GM170120P25)
Sell To Open 10 GM Jan-17 28 puts (GM170120P28) for a credit of $.98 (selling a vertical)

I collected $980 less the $25 commission, or $955 (of course, you could sell a single spread and take only 1/10th the risk). My maximum loss and net investment is $2145. This works out to be a 45% gain if the stock closes at any price above $28. I will make a gain at any price above $27.05. When the Jan-17 expiration date comes along, I will not have to do anything. If the stock is at any price above $28, both the long and short put will expire worthless and I will be able to keep the $955 I collected at the beginning. It feels like a safe investment to me, and a whole lot better than the 5.2% dividend they are paying.

 

Way back when Google (GOOGL) went public at $80 a share, I decided that I would like to own 100 shares and hang on to it for the long run. Obviously, that was a good idea as the stock is trading today at $716. My $8000 investment would now be worth $144,000 (the stock had a 2-for-1 split in November 2014) if I had been able to keep my original shares. Unfortunately, over the years, an options opportunity inevitably came along that looked more attractive to me than my 100 shares of GOOGL, and I sold my shares to take advantage of the opportunity.

Many times my investment account had compiled a little spare cash, and I went back into the market and bought more shares of GOOGL, always paying a little more to buy it back. At some point it felt like I just had too much money tied up in it. An $8000 commitment is one thing, but $144,000 is a major commitment.

Today I would like to share how I own the equivalent of 100 shares of GOOGL for an investment of less than $15,000, and the neat thing about my investment is that I get expect to get a “dividend” in the next month of about $1700 if the stock just sits there and doesn’t go anywhere.

I own options, of course. Here are two ways you can play it if you like Google.

Terry

How to Own 100 Shares of Google (Worth $71,600) for $15,000 or Make 12% a Month With Options:

You would have to shell out about $71,600 today to buy 100 shares of GOOGL stock. If you bought it on margin, you might have to come up with about half that amount, $35,800, but you have to shell out interest on the margin loan each month. I like money coming in, not going out.

Last week we talked about the Greek measure delta. This is simple the equivalent number of shares of stock that an option has. I own GOOGL 700 calls that expire on the third Friday of January 2017. You could buy one today for $8360. I own 2 of them for a cost of about $16,800

The delta for these Jan-17 700 calls is 60. That means if the stock goes up by a dollar, the value of each of my options will go up by $60. With these 2 options I own the equivalent of 120 shares of stock.

Since all options decline a little bit every day that the stock stays flat (it is called decay), simply owning options is just about as bad as paying margin interest on a stock loan. As I said earlier, I like money coming in rather than going out.

Over the course of the next ten months, the 700 call option will fall in value and end up being worth $1,600 if GOOGL is flat (trading at $716). That works out to an average monthly decay of $666 for each call I own.

One of the things I could do with these calls would be to cover this decay amount by selling two Apr2-16 750 calls for $700 each. The delta on these calls is 26. That means I would own the equivalent of 68 shares of stock worth $48,688 yet I only would have shelled out $16,800 less $1400, or $15,400. In other words, my option investment would cost less than 1/3 of what buying the stock would cost and I would not be paying any interest. Of course, it would take a little work on my part. In one month, if the stock were selling at less than $750, the calls I had sold would expire worthless and I would have to sell more one-month-out calls for at least $666 to cover the average monthly decay of the Jan-17 700 calls I had purchased. It will probably be at a different strike than 750, depending on what the new stock price was at the time.

If the stock were to rise above $750 in one month (I would be delighted because I would make a gain of about $2300 for the month – 68x$34), I would have to buy back the Apr2-16 750 calls just before they expired and sell May2-16 calls at a higher strike price, making sure I collected enough to cover the cost of buying back the Apr2-16 750 calls and the $666 each call will fall on average each month.

Instead of simply using options to own stock with only 1/3 of what it would cost to buy the stock, I chose a different way of trading. Most of the time, I would participate in the higher stock price, but I will make a nice gain every month even if the stock stays flat. Since I own 2 call options at a lower strike price than the market price I am entitled to use them as collateral to sell someone else the opportunity to buy shares of GOOGL. I sold one Apr2-16 725 call, collecting $15.40 ($1540) at today’s price. This option will expire in 30 days (April 8). If the stock is at any price less than $725, this call will expire worthless and I will get to keep the entire $1540.

This Apr2-16 725 call option that I sold carries a delta of 46, making my net option value (120-46) 74 deltas (the equivalent of 74 shares of stock). I also sold a second Apr2-16 call, this one at the 735 strike price, collecting $1150. This call has a delta of 39, giving me a 35 net delta value (60+60-46-39). I won’t own the equivalent of 120 shares of stock that I would have if I hadn’t sold calls against my Jan-17 calls, but I could possibly make even greater gains from option decay.

I now own the equivalent of 35 shares of GOOGL at a cost of $16,800 less the $2690 I collected from selling the two calls, or $14,110.

The neat thing about my option positions is that if the stock doesn’t go up (as I hope it will), my disappointment will be soothed a bit because I will gain about $1700 over the next month. Here is the risk profile graph for my positions:

 

The P/L Day column in the lower right-hand corner shows what the gain or loss will be at the price in the first column on the left. It shows that when the Apr2-16 calls expire on April 8, my positions will have a $1,742 gain in value (12% for the month on my investment of $14,110). If the stock were to gain just a little, I could make as much as $3000. If it went up 5% (about $35) I would make about the same amount as if it remained unchanged.

While a possible 12% gain every month sounds a little too good to be true, if you do it right, the actual gain would be greater. For the first few months, the Jan-17 700 calls I bought will decay less than the average $666 monthly amount. Theta (decay for a single day) is $12, or about $360 for the first month. For the last month just before it expires, the Jan-17 700 calls would decay about $1250. The best way to play this strategy would be to put some money back in (using cash you have taken out every month) when there is about 3 or 4 remaining months to the Jan-17 calls and sell those calls and replace them with calls expiring at a more distant-out month, such as July 2017 or January 2018.

There are disadvantages to owing the options I do rather than the stock. The biggest problem comes when the stock fluctuates by large numbers in either direction. If the stock falls 5% ($36), my options would lose about $2196. If I owned 68 shares of stock, I would lose $2448, about 11% more than the options loss. However, if the stock were to tumble significantly more than 5% in one month, the option loss would be considerably greater than the loss of share value. If the stock goes up by 5% in the next month, I would gain $2448 if I owned 68 shares of stock, and only $1884 with the options, or about $564 (23%) less than the stock would have gained. Using options rather than stock, I give up a little potential gain if the stock picks up 5% in one month but make a much greater gain if the stock is flat or moves moderately higher.

The major advantage to my options positions comes when the stock fluctuates well less than 5% in a month. As we showed earlier, an absolutely flat stock will result in a 12% gain while owning the stock would not make a penny.

I have just outlined two possible ways that you can invest in a company you like with options rather than buying the stock. One strategy allows you to have the equivalent of owning stock while having to come up with only one-third of the cash. A second strategy is designed to make about 12% in every month when the stock is flat or rises moderately. Either way seems smarter to me than just buying the stock.