atticus, I'm sorry if my posts have annoyed or offended you. I am truly grateful for the replies I have received here - even yours was helpful to me in spite of its tone. In my defense, I think if you read my posts it should be pretty clear that I wasn't ever claiming that I was bringing "news" to the table. I saw something that to my untrained eye looked like a profitable arbitrage opportunity, but it seemed unlikely that such a "free lunch" should exist, so I posted my questions in hopes of benefiting from the wisdom of traders more experienced than myself. Thanks (to you and everyone else) for helping to further my trading education, and apologies again if I have ruffled any feathers along the way.
OK, so I think you guys are right (thanks again) that the stock is probably HTB, and if brokerages are charging a fee/interest to short the stock, then that would explain the situation pretty well. I was aware of the concept of a HTB list, but not that I might be charged a substantial fee to short. I have a couple of further questions if I haven't overtaxed your patience... If a stock is HTB and there is a put/call pricing disparity, is that a reliable bearish indicator? (Albeit one that is very hard to exploit since you can't short the stock and the puts are overpriced) Or is it just as likely that the underlying stock is headed for a short squeeze? Am I correct in thinking that in this situation you would be throwing away money to buy the stock directly? I guess the exception would be if you were day-trading ... but if you were planning on holding past the options expiration date then taking a synthetic long position would get you a significant discount to the stock price, correct? Stocks move on and off the HTB list, right? If a stock moves off the HTB list, does the put/call disparity disappear either immediately or pretty quickly? Is the HTB list some centralized thing, or does each broker have its own HTB list and its own fees? Thanks for your continued willingness to educate a humble newbie... P.S. I found another link to an article that almost exactly addresses my situation: http://blog.discoveroptions.com/?p=876
I'm annoyed by the fact that you are looking for help yet don't feel the need to reciprocate with the ticker. Of course it's meaningless as there is no arb, but I find it odd that you expect a handout.