Another/Continued market rally?  I’d presume Ajay Bhatt will be involved in this one, too…so perhaps 10k later this week?  What say you, Ajay?

In all seriousness, somehow it comes as no “real” surprise that INTC absolutely obliterated their earnings expectations (best Q2->Q3 growth in over 30 years!).  I think it’s also important to note, that corporate/server demand was higher than expected and strength was seen across the board, in all geographies – probable signs of a global recovery, no?

Now, obviously I’m a bit of a fanboy (stemming from some personal & financial ties)…but really, could we expect anything less from the greatest semiconductor company EVER!? (Certainly, many options traders were thinking the same, as INTC call volume was 5x put volume for the day.)

Hey-hey, segue…OPTIONS UPDATE:

• Again no action in the $CPCI tonight.  It stayed essentially flat at 1.33 (thresholds:  1.52 & 1.08).
• Slightly more exciting, the $VIX finally broke below 23 (by the slimmest of margins, mind you) after knocking on its door for the last month+.  With Intel’s result providing further confidence in our economic conditions, I’d expect this downward trend to continue…all the way into the teens…
• Since bullish options speculators have gotten INTC right…let’s see what other (tech) names they were looking at today:
  • AAPL – 2:1 call:put volume, with the 190 calls being the most popular in both Oct’09 and Nov’09 expirations.
  • AMSC – 3:1 call:put volume.  Again, the ATM Oct’09 were most active.
  • AKAM seeing well over 5:1 call:put ratio, some extra bullish speculation stemming from renewed buyout rumors.
  • STEC’s been getting the extended homo-hammer, but seeing 3:1 call:put volume today.
  • Others:  CSCO, MSFT, LLTC, STAR (obviously)

PERSONALLY:
Booked my best win in quite some time in INTU calls (near 100%), while also getting rid of HUM calls at a breakeven and booking a loss on STEC (potentially inopportune time, considering the aforementioned bullish speculation).  So that was all good…but unfortunately I got hosed on SYNA thanks to a downgrade and the subsequent gap down, past my stop loss and the associated limit sell on the options.  So now I’ve set a new stop on those, but at a much lower level than yesterday…

Entered only 1 new position: WAG puts.  Could’ve had another, but APA screwed me in much the same way as SYNA (gap down below my limit entry).  Full details below.

For tomorrow, I’m looking to bank off of Intel’s good numbers via numerous calls.  Surprisingly, FAZ, of all things, is also signalling a potential call entry (which obviously is bearish on the market in general), although I definitely don’t expect that price point to get hit…

• Calls:
  • FAZ (@ 20.07)
  • VOD (@ 21.67)
  • VZ (@ 29.29)
  • WMT (@ 50.60)
  • X (@ 44.58)
• Puts:
  • EOG (@ 87.87)