Broken spine. I almost shorted this mofo on Friday when I straddled BSC. Sonofabitch. I hate it when I don't listen to my instinct. edit - almost, not always.
I was in the 35 puts until something strange happened yesterday, stock price fell from 43.50 to 42 and the price of the puts went down from 2.45 to 2.15 as someone well selling them and took me out of my puts. Lo and behold about a half hour later the selling in the stock stopped (probably someone knew a big sell order was nearly done) and the stock flatlined before doing a small short squeeze. Seeing them trading this morning @1.85 with the stock down to 41 when I sold them yesterday for 2.15 when the stock was at 42.50 got me back in but a much smaller position, managed to sell a few 30s against them on the push down under 38.50. If the market takes a dump LEH will go down hard.
I meant to say "I almost" shorted, not "always shorted," on Friday, mav. If only. It would have been nice to pick those 1.85s up. I think I'll go in on this mav. Thanks for reminding me - I am just wondering if we'll see any intraday bounce here b/c it's down really hard from the open.
Silence from LEH throughout has been deafening. For me the giveaway was the PR plant explaining how Fuld made a mistake last time around by being silent when the stock price was tanking but everything was OK, the insinuation, but not the SEC/GAAP conforming fact, being that everything is OK this time, Fuld is just not saying so due to a strange personality trait again. LEH balance sheet has apparently had some strange manouvres applied to it. Yeah, the said all was OK but then so did BSC. The giveawya is often when somebody says something he didn't need to say or volounteers info that there is no need to volounteer.
Okay, I'm in. You guys enticed me. I'm going to watch the live stream and pick an entry point (the best I think I can get intraday). I'll put my position up at entry and let you guys know size and price. That way, I'm locked in whether I win or lose. I usually don't talk about trades before hand, but big deal - I'm a grain of sand on the beach.
Strange maneuvers is putting it mildly. If they hadn't accounted the writedowns others took against positions with LEH they would have shown a loss last earnings rather than a profit. The way the stock has been acting while the rest of the market has been bouncing has been about as clear a tell as you can get. IF ,and it is a big IF, which is why you just have to hedge in this environment (maybe some XLF, QQQQ, FXI calls) things unravel again then I would expect to see LEH back under $30. http://www.portfolio.com/news-marke...ns-Debt-Shuffle Sold some 45 against 50 calls to improve cost basis on the bounce.
Here's something I didn't think about. UBS is in big trouble. But the Swiss have quite the rep, so they won't let it fail. Hadn't thought about that angle. But they step in at 5, or 25?