Trigger May be Imminent: How to Trade Papa John's International After an Earnings Gap Drop Disclaimer The results here are provided for general informational purposes, as a convenience to the readers. The materials are not a substitute for obtaining professional advice from a qualified person, firm or corporation. LEDE The pizza maker, Papa John's International Inc (PZZA), has had a rough few weeks, culminating in the ouster of John Schnatter, its founder, Chairman and CEO who is also the largest shareholder, after making racist comments. That could pave the path to confusion over leadership in the near-term, but still, what would be the catalyst to a bearish momentum turn? It turns out, it could be earnings, which are estimated (not confirmed) by Wall Street Horizon to come out on 7-31-2018. There is a bearish momentum pattern in Papa John's International Inc (PZZA) stock 1 trading day after earnings, if and only if the stock showed a large gap down after the actual earnings announcement. This back-test was only triggered if the earnings move was a gap down. This is a conditional entry -- the company reports earnings and if the stock move off of that report is a 3% loss or larger, then a bearish position is back-tested looking for continuing downward momentum. The event is rare, but when it has occurred, the back-test results are noteworthy. Papa John's International Earnings In Papa John's International Inc, if the stock move immediately following an earnings result was a large drop (3% or more to the downside), when we test waiting one-day after that earnings announcement and then bought a three-week at the money (50 delta) put, the results were quite strong. This back-test opens one-day after earnings were announced to try to find a stock that continues a downward spiral after an earnings gap down. Simply owning options after earnings, blindly, is likely not a good trade, but hand-picking the times and the stocks to do it in can be useful. We can test this approach without bias with a custom option back-test. Here is the timing set-up around earnings: Rules * Condition: Wait for the one-day stock move off of earnings, and if it shows a 3% loss or more in the underlying, then, follow these rules: * Open the long at-the-money put one-trading day after earnings. * Close the long put 14 calendar days after earnings. * Use the options closest to 21 days from expiration (but more than 14 days). This is a straight down the middle direction trade -- this trade wins if the stock is continues on a downward trajectory after a large earnings move the two-weeks following earnings and it will stand to lose if the stock rises, instead. This is not a silver bullet -- it's a trade that needs to be carefully examined. But, this is a conditional back-test, which is to say, it only triggers if an event before it occurs. RISK CONTROL Since blindly owning put can be a quick way to lose in the option market, we will apply a tight risk control to this analysis as well. We will add a 40% stop loss and a 40% limit gain. In English, at the close of every trading day, if the put is up 40% from the price at the start of the trade, it gets sold for a profit. If it is down 40%, it gets sold for a loss. This also has the benefit of taking profits if there is a stock decline early in the two-week period rather than waiting to close 14-days later. Another risk reducing move we made was to use 21-day options and only hold them for 14-days so the trade doesn't suffer from total premium decay. RESULTS If we bought the at-the-money put in Papa John's International Inc (PZZA) over the last two-years but only held it after earnings and after an earnings drop, we get these results: PZZA Long 50 Delta Put % Wins: 100% Wins: 3 Losses: 0 % Return: 305% Tap Here to See the Back-test The mechanics of the TradeMachine® are that it uses end of day prices for every back-test entry and exit (every trigger). Looking at Averages The overall return was 305%; but the trade statistics tell us more with average trade results: ➡ The average return per trade was 114.3% over each 13-day period. DISCOVERY We identified this back-test result quickly and easily by scanning across "all tickers" and looking at the "1 Day After Earnings Drop, Long Put" scan. MORE RECENT HISTORY We can even look at just the past year and see this event was triggered twice. Here are those results: PZZA Long 50 Delta Put % Wins: 100% Wins: 2 Losses: 0 % Return: 257% Tap Here to See the Back-test Here's a stock chart with the earnings gaps down and the following bearish momentum highlighted: WHAT HAPPENED You can guess stock direction -- guess momentum -- guess anything. Or, you can be empirical. But there's a lot less luck to successful option trading than that -- and every professional trader knows it. To learn more watch this quick demonstration video -- the first 70 seconds alone could change your view of trading, forever: Tap Here to See the Tools at Work Risk Disclosure You should read the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options. Past performance is not an indication of future results. Trading futures and options involves the risk of loss. Please consider carefully whether futures or options are appropriate to your financial situation. Only risk capital should be used when trading futures or options. Investors could lose more than their initial investment. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. The risk of loss in trading can be substantial, carefully consider the inherent risks of such an investment in light of your financial condition. Please note that the executions and other statistics in this article are hypothetical, and do not reflect the impact, if any, of certain market factors such as liquidity and slippage.
Wow, all this on the assumption that it may drop 3% for your entry? lol yes, this changed my life forever.
I'll just copy and paste from the article: "This is a conditional entry -- the company reports earnings and if the stock move off of that report is a 3% loss or larger, then a bearish position is back-tested looking for continuing downward momentum. If the stock move immediately following an earnings result was a large drop (3% or more to the downside), when we test waiting one-day after that earnings announcement and then bought a three-week at the money (50 delta) put, the results were quite strong." So, if the stock closes down 3% or more off of earnings, after that, there has been a window of continuing decline.
Wow. Impressive bio. Meet the Team Capital Market Laboratories is an institution with research that sits side-by-side with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and the rest as a part of the famed Thomson First Call service. But we are the anti-institution — our purpose is to provide institutional research to all investors and break the information monopoly held by the top .1%. Thanks for standing with us. Ophir Gottlieb (CEO & Co-founder) — Ophir Gottlieb is the CEO & Co-founder of Capital Market Laboratories. He contributes to Yahoo! Finance, CNNMoney, MarketWatch, Business Insider, and Reuters. He was rated the 14th best finance follow on all of Twitter. He has turned away from institutional finance and re-dedicated his life to helping all people find the capacity and facility to invest with the same confidence and information available to only the top 0.1%. In many ways, Ophir was unintentionally a part of this asymmetry, but now, he is here to tear it down. Ophir Gottlieb is inventor of the Forensic Alpha Model (FAM) and a co-inventor of Accounting and Governance Risk Model (AGR), both now owned commercially by MSCI. SSRN lists his research, and as far as we can tell, he was one of the earliest scientists to identify deep learning, and in particular, neural networks, as a novel approach to examining financial markets while also whole hardheartedly incorporating corporate governance. Mr. Gottlieb’s methodological approach taken in creating FAM was endorsed by the head of artificial intelligence for the state of Germany as a novel and extraordinary application of advanced machine learning and quantitative finance. FAM and AGR are used by asset managers worldwide with over $1 trillion of assets under management. The FAM model has made Mr. Gottlieb one of the most recognized names in all of quantitative finance. The Huffington Post dedicated an article to Ophir’s views in the dossier Financial Services Third Wave of Innovation: AI & Machine Learning. A rare view into his vision of the world of finance, including a 20 minute video session. Mr Gottlieb’s mathematics, measure theory and machine learning background stems from his graduate work in mathematics and measure theory at Stanford University and his time as an option market maker on the NYSE and CBOE exchange floors. He has been cited by various financial media including Reuters, Bloomberg, Wall St. Journal, Dow Jones Newswire and through re-publications in Barron’s, Forbes, SF Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and Miami Herald and is often seen on financial television. Mr. Gottlieb was an option maker on the NYSE ARCA exchange floor and simultaneously on the Chicago Board Option Exchange (CBOE) remotely. He first gained notoriety as the managing director of client services and algorithmic trading for Livevol Inc, recently acquired by CBOE. He created and authored what was believed to be the most heavily followed option trading blog in the world for three-years. While he was oft times cited in Bloomberg, Reuters and Wall Street Journal news, during that time he also wrote for The Street.com’s OptionsProfits premium service where he posted up to three option trades a week for two-years. James A. Kaplan (Chairman & Co-founder) — Mr. Kaplan is a founding director of MarketWatch, and is widely recognized as one of the grandfather’s of modern portfolio theory. For the past 20 years, James Kaplan’s research interests and entrepreneurial ventures have focused on innovations designed to improve the predictive and explanatory power of classical finance theories and portfolio management philosophies. Before he co-founded CML, Mr. Kaplan as Vice Chairman and Chief Executive of GMI Ratings (now part of MSCI). In this role, Mr. Kaplan developed novel risk modeling methodologies to help capital market participants mitigate the impact of what he has dubbed “routine anomalies”. The term refers to high-impact events stemming from variables typically overlooked in classical economic theories. Earlier in his career, Mr. Kaplan has advanced ground breaking applications of quantitative techniques and technology-driven solutions for equity and fixed-income portfolio analytics. In 1979, he founded Capital Management Sciences (CMS) and established the firm as the world’s top purveyor of fixed income portfolio analytics. During his tenure, the firm introduced CMS BondEdge, the chief independent source of research and valuation tools for the global bond market. Following the sale of CMS to Interactive Data Corporation, Mr. Kaplan was a founding director of MarketWatch. In the wake of the notorious corporate scandals after 2000, he founded Audit Integrity, one of the three firms that merged to form GMI Ratings. Mr. Kaplan received his BA from the University of Colorado and an MBA from California State University. Mr. Kaplan is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Jason Hitchings (Chief Technology Officer) – Jason Hitchings is the Chief Technology Officer at CML. He has diverse background in software engineering, product development, data visualizations as well as numerical analysis and real-time algorithmic option pricing. He was the lead developer and product manager that led to one of the first ever SQL databases that updated asset prices in real-time; an accomplishment at the time that was considered by many in the industry to be impossible but is now common place in all of the exchanges and major banks in the world. Jason’s experience includes Head of Product at data visualization firm, Quid, the co-founder and lead engineer of financial analytics firm and broker-dealer, Livevol, Inc. Jason has also worked as the lead software engineer on Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter Autonomic Logistics team Jason holds a computer science degree from University of Colorado, Boulder. Tom White (Chief Information Officer & Co-founder) — Tom White is the Chief Information Officer and co-founder of Capital Market Laboratories and a veteran of numerous start-ups. As Director of Quantitative Research for Audit Integrity (now part of MSCI) he applied predictive analytic techniques to model accounting fraud and securities class action litigation. Mr. White led the Analytic Science team at KUITY in ground breaking work applying ‘Big Data’ techniques to the field of philanthropy, ultimately resulting in the creation and spinoff of Posiba, Inc. As a consultant at First USA Bank, Mr. White’s team was one of the earliest adopters of analytics, using predictive models to optimize marketing efforts, increasing profits from 3rd party products by over 250% in just 24 months. Mr. White received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia and a Certification in Data Mining from the University of California, San Diego.
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