I was reading the Fast Money recap and this part caught my eye.
Pete Najarian noted unusually bullish options activity in Comcast(CMCSA Quote - Cramer on CMCSA - Stock Picks). He said company is seeing a growing number of people staying at home watching TV and an increasing number of people upgrading their Comcast functions.
So I checked and there was a strange trade at the Jan 09 30 Call in which someone bought 20,000 of them for .01 each. Also there was another 1,892 of the Jan 09 35 Call this time at .05 cents. This is a strange trade considering how far out of the money it is since the stock is only trading at $15.33. You figure it wouldn't double with just 3 days until expiry like that. All I can think of is that it could have been an error since it is such a round trade like that.
However there was 10,858 Feb 09 17.50 Calls traded on the same day which was almost more then the entire Feb Open Interest combined. These were bought at $0.60. So someone is anticipating some good news at the company going into their earnings on Feb 18 to the tune of $600K.
Maybe channel checks are saying they might guide higher or something. I think Najarian's speculation that more people are staying home and upgrading their cable has some legs to it. It might even be a play on the Analog to Digital Switchover happening on Feb. 18. I mean maybe lots of people will switch over to cable instead of either upgrading their TV (too expensive in a recession) or buying a converter box (I mean the $40 coupons have just run out.) Unless the FCC jumps in and extends to deadline we may see millions of new cable subscribers.
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