Yes indeed, gratz to all the IMCL longs, wow. Last trade before the halt was 34, best bid right now is 43.91. Sweet.
i suspect that more than a few of the trades today in IMCL will be broken. that plunge to the halt was too preciptitous. wee
long calls, before the news announcement. it really actually used to be that even though the underlying would be halted, the options would still trade for a spell, thus allowing others to place their bets, as it were.... SSF's would have allowed you to do the same irrespective of the trading halt (please someone confirm this), provided that IMCL has an SSF
Thanks Maverick. I'm long March 30 puts on IMCL. Small investment, lottery play. Explanation of the {long 21%}: It was a 70-30 30-70 play for me. I thought that the chances of IMCL Erbitux getting approved was pretty good. Long Call options did not appear attractive for me (considering the high IV and hence the premium) because with IMCL's market cap of over $3B, I believe that the stock could hit $50/share max with approval. Strictly my assessment: 70% chance of approval and 30% chance of rejection. On the other hand, if FDA had rejected IMCL Erbitux, then in my opinion, IMCL would have hit $15/share by March Expiration (70% probability by MY assessment). So, 30% (chance of rejection) times 70% (chance of hitting price-target by expiration) equals 21%. That small chance would have meant a substantial amount of money (substantial for me, maybe not for others). No regrets on the play. 'will keep on trying...
The last two high-profile FDA approval cases I've seen where approval was expected (ICOS and IMCL) have both shown moderate sell-the-news reactions, accompanied of course by a huge deflation in the options' IVs. So a moderate bear spread would be reasonable. In my case, I was already long the stock and long an equal number of Feb 35 P. On Wednesday I sold Feb 45 C for half my holdings, which would effectively get me out of some of the stock at 47. I was still shocked at Thursday's freefall, having lived through COCO's drop in December. What did y'all do when you saw this? At first I froze. Then I pondered whether any IMCL trades I made right now would just be busted later. Then the stock got halted, so I went long in ABGX, which was down in sympathy.
On Feb. 1 a search I ran was a short Feb 40 straddle on IMCL as a short straddle candidate. The high vol was the attractive part. I put that trade in a stored portfolio and as of Feb. 13 the value of that trade was up 31.4% in 13 days. I didn't do this trade as I normally don't do short straddles but thought the results were interesting given all the circumstances that have evolved around IMCL.