Correlation Between Options Activity and Earnings Report

[Spoofee]

I'm not a big trader, but sometimes get intrigued by the stock talk that goes around the office. I was wondering if there is a correlation between option activity before an earnings report and the price after earnings report.

For those that don't know what CALL or PUT options are, it's simply a tool used for high risk, high reward.

Buy CALL options when you want to bet a stock will go up
Buy PUT options when you want to bet a stock will go down

It's extremely dangerous, and I wouldn't get in any deeper than that if you have not yet.

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That said, Let's look at today's earnings activity.

Just looking at the companies with bigger market cap
FFIV, QCOM, BIDU, EBAY, NFLX, WDC

FFIV - about the same CALL vs PUT options
- up 7 percent afterhours

QCOM - about the same CALL vs PUT options
- up 5 percent afterhours

BIDU - about 2x+ more CALL options
- up 3 percent afterhours

EBAY - about 2-3x more CALL options
- up 3 percent afterhours

NFLX - about the same CALL vs PUT options
- down 9 percent afterhours

WDC - about 4x more PUT options
- down 3 percent afterhours

Seems like you can just bet on a stock to go up or down before earnings if there is a clear sentiment by looking at the options, take that bet. Ignore the ones that don't have a clear call vs put ratio.

I should probably write a script that does this sort of thing for bigger cap companies to see how often this holds true - when I have time anyways :P

[Spoofee]

For Thursday 07/22/10

AT&T - about 3-4x more CALL options
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=T+Options
- if theory is correct, AT&T should report really good earnings
- Update : yes, they did report good earnings, stock is up 3 percent

AMZN - about the same CALL vs PUT options
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=AMZN+Options
- Update : Stock is down 13 percent!

MSFT - about 2x more CALL options
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=MSFT&m=2010-08
- if theory is correct, MSFT should report really good earnings
- Update : yes, they did report good earnings, stock is flat

[Spoofee]

For Friday 07/23/10

VZ - about 6x more CALL OPTIONS
Quotes for VZ - Yahoo! Finance
- if theory is correct, VZ should report better than expected earnings and stock should rise after reporting

[kenji4861]

Great analysis.