Alibaba (BABA) went public about 2 weeks ago. Four days prior to that we published a blog article pointing out the high prices of Yahoo call options. YHOO owns a big piece of BABA and people were expecting BABA to soar once it went public (and, hence, also expected YHOO to go up).
We had listed two sets of YHOO covered calls: (1) monthlies that expired the day of the BABA IPO, and (2) weeklys that expired one week after the IPO. YHOO closed at 40.93 on Sep 19, so all of the covered calls we listed that had a net debit of 40.93 or higher made money, which was all 5 of the in-the-money ones.
For the Sep 26 covered calls, YHOO closed at 40.66 which meant 8 of the 9 covered calls we listed (all of the in-the-money ones plus 3 of the out-of-the-money ones) for that expiration were profitable.
As with other high-risk, hype situations, the in-the-money options were the more conservative choice, and all of them made money. They had Annualized Returns of 91% to 256% for the Sep 19 expiration, and 86% to 166% for the Sep 26 expiration. See the original article at YHOO Options Before BABA IPO.
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