As traders await the AT&T Inc. $95-a-share bid to buy DirecTV (DTV), some are paying should the deal fall through.?
According to Bloomberg,?DirecTV contracts to sell are the highest ever compared to?bullish bets when looking at data on three-month options all the way to 2004. This year, its stock has increased 23 percent.?
Stephen Fauer, a?fund manager?at Pinnacle Capital Management, recently said to Bloomberg,??A lot of people are spending money to hedge against the downside. I?d like to use options to protect our position, but they?re just not priced very favorably.?
Implied volatility for puts and calls dropped to record lows after the takeover bid had been announced last month. But after the news, puts implied volatility has surged 65 percent to 22.62 and for calls, it has dropped 11 percent to 11.53.
Bloomberg noted that for DirecTV contracts, the three most-traded ones included puts at at $82.50, $80 and $77.50. On Monday, the stock closed at $84.61.
Last week on June 16, a trader purchased 6,000 December DirecTV puts with a $75 strike price and its shares subsequently rose less than 0.1 percent to $83.13 on that day.?
Sachin Shah, a special situations and merger-arbitrage strategist at New York-based Albert Fried & Co., said to Bloomberg, “Near-term uncertainty is causing options traders to take these short-term bearish bets. People are positioning themselves like this because a resolution is still so far off. They?re looking for an excuse to sell.?