Trading Tips Blog

Christopher Swift, the Chairman and CEO of The Hartford Financial Services Group (HIG), picked up another $251,000 worth of shares recently. The buy added 6,975 shares in total, or a 2.4 percent increase in the CEO’s holdings. Insider data at the company shows a mix of buys and sells. Most interestingly, however, the same CEO was a big seller of shares a year ago, when they traded 40 percent higher. Although shares are down substantially over the past year, revenues are ...
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Traders are betting on a big move higher in The Gap (GPS). Over 7,700 contracts traded on the December 2020 $19 calls on shares. That’s a 55-fold rise in volume compared to the prior open interest of 141 contracts. Shares of The Gap trade at $17, so shares need to rise a bit over 10 percent in the next 80 days to move in-the-money. The option traded for $0.67, or $67 per contract, on average. Shares of the retail apparel firm have ...
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Stephen Neal, a director at Nvidia (NVDA) recently bought 450 shares of Nvidia. The purchase price came to just over $224,000. The director now owns just under 4,000 shares of the company. Neal has been a buyer of shares throughout the year, although this is his largest purchase year-to-date. Insiders have almost exclusively been sellers, as is typical of a large-cap tech company that issues large amounts of shares to employees. With the company’s latest product announcements and increased cryptocurrency mining demand, ...
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Railroad stocks are looking undervalued as traffic is holding up well. In fact, the latest measures are showing that rail volumes are back to pre-pandemic levels. Railroads ship goods all over the country, including consumer goods from ports, as well as commodities from farm states, making them an interesting hybrid play on all levels of the economy. With rail volume holding up so well, it’s a sign that the economy continues to recover. That’s what led Benchmark’s logistics analyst to upgrade ...
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Traders are betting on a big move higher in GoPro (GPRO). The July 2021 $5 calls just saw over 2,500 contracts trade, a 24-fold surge in volume over the prior open interest of near 100 contracts. Expiring in 291 days, the bet is that shares will rally over 10 percent from their current price near $4.25. The call buyer paid about $0.84, or $84 per contract, on average. Shares of the "selfie stick" company will need to move over 25 percent higher ...
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Eric Palmer, the Chief Financial Officer at Cigna (CI), recently picked up 1,000 shares. The buy cost just over $168,000, and leaves the CFO with over 26,800 shares, a 3 percent increase. As a large, publicly-traded company, there are a number of both buys and sells over the past year, with sellers far outweighing buyers. This is the second insider buy since June. Generally, a CFO buy is a solid sign. As the company’s main expert on finances, a CFO tends ...
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Bank stocks can either be a great investment or a terrible one, depending on the timing. With the economy struggling to recover, banks aren’t the most obvious candidate for a rally. Yet many investors are gravitating towards them as investment opportunities now. Part of that may be the relative valuation of the banks, as they haven’t had the strong rallies of the tech sector. Another part is that, while interest rates may weigh on profitability, the banks will still profit. One such ...
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The energy sector continues to slide lower, and traders are betting that the trend will continue. A number of bearish trades have been made against Occidental Petroleum (OXY). The most active was the October 30th $10 put. Expiring in just 35 days, shares would need to fall about 3 percent from their current price of $10.30 to move in-the-money. Over 2,153 options traded against an open interest of 111, for a 19-fold rise in volume. The buyer paid about $0.82 per contract, ...
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