Another Interesting Short-Term Play on Aetna (AET)

your investment if AET doesn’t move up or down by more than $9 in the next two weeks.

Terry

 Another Interesting Short-Term Play on Aetna (AET)

 This week, once again we are looking at Aetna (AET), a health care benefits company.  If you check out its chart, you can see that it does not historically make big moves in either direction, especially down:

AET Aetna Chart 2 January 2017

In spite of this lack of volatility, for some reason, IV of the short-term options is extremely high, 44 for the series that expires in 10 days.  The company is trying to purchase Humana, and the justice department may have some objections, and there seems to be concerns how insurance companies will fare under the Trump administration, two factors which may help explain the high IV. Neither of the possible adverse outcomes are likely to occur in the next 14 days, at least in my opinion.

AET is trading at $122 as I write this.  I think it is highly unlikely that it will fall below $113 in 14 days or above $131 when the 3Feb17 options expire.  Here is a trade I made today:

Buy to Open 10 AET 03Feb17 108 puts (AET170317P108)

Sell to Open 10 AET 03Feb17 113 puts (AET170317P113)
Buy to Open 10 AET 03Feb17 136 calls (AET170317C136)

Sell to Open 10 AET 03Feb17 131 calls (AET170317C131) for a credit of $1.48 (selling an iron condor)

There are 4 commissions involved in this trade ($1.25 each at the rate charged by thinkorswim for Terry’s Tips subscribers), so the $1480 I collected from the above trade, I paid $50 in commisisons and netted $1430.  The spread will create a maintenance requirement of $5000 less the $1430 so that my investment (and maximum loss if AET closes below $109 or above $136) is $3570.

If AET closes in two weeks at any price higher than $113 and lower than $131, all these options will expire worthless and there will be nothing more for me to do that decide how I want to spend my 40% gain.

Of course, you could only do one of these spreads if you did not want to commit the entire $3570.

If AET moves quite close to either of these prices, I will send out another note explaining how I intend to cope with a possible loss.  I hope and expect I will not have to do that.  It is only 14 days to wait.