The chart below displays the VIX. The annotations indicate that the VIX may be putting in a rounded bottom on the daily chart over the last few trading days. This comes after the whole fiscal cliff political game of chicken. After a ‘resolution’ was released, the VIX dropped and the market popped. ‘Resolution’ being code for political failure to get anything constructive done.  Investors witnessed a historic drop in the VIX…this could be a basement window trade.

A basement window trade is essentially plunging into an asset with defined support below it, like jumping out of a basement window and hitting the ground…minimal damage done. There are many ways to execute such a trade, for example a call fly going out a few months with a middle strike at $17 in the VIX. The $17 level is the middle of the post fiscal cliff gap down.

Some sort of long volatility trade could be advised when one is mostly long in the market. A call butterfly is a cheap way to get long the VIX, if one is inclined to do so. Most can agree that the ETFs like the VXX are not a long-term hold. It is also interesting to note that the current implied volatility in the SPY is below its 20 year historical.

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 Author

salerno.mark.a@gmail.com

Paper bought 2444 KMX April 40 Calls for $1.15 (5.1 times usual volume) when stock was trading $37.55 
Paper sold 1400 BP Feb 50 Puts for $6.20 when stock was trading $44.27
Paper bought 8000 SBAC Feb 70 Calls for $1.60 (7.2 times usual volume) when stock was trading $70.11
Paper sold 15,000 ETFC Feb 10 Straddle for $.88 (8.8 times usual volume) when stock was trading $9.85
Paper sold 2000 TUMI Feb 20 Calls for $2.65 (20.3 times usual volume) when stock was trading $22

BIDU is best known for its massive share of the Chinese search market. Some analysts estimate that BIDU has over 80% of China search. This is arguably a function of America’s GOOG deciding to leave China because of an ethical dispute, but either way this is in the past and the market looks into the future. The future of search is perhaps in our hands…our mobile devices.  China’s massive population and technologically savvy culture demands efficient mobile devices. One of the most basic capabilities of today’s mobile device is the ability to search.

BIDU is estimated to own nearly 35% of the Chinese mobile search market. This is not much compared to normal search market share, but it is a start…a monopoly is not built overnight. BIDU is making efforts in order to further dominate this market; these efforts include the development of a mobile operating system and acquisition of specific smaller firms.

Credit Suisse recently downgraded BIDU. The call was essentially because the firm thought the risk of acquisitions would not be good for the stock. The rest of the analyst community is estimating that BIDU will make $7.40 this fiscal year. This estimate multiplied by the median PE (19x) puts BIDU at $140…about $30 of upside potential. One should not ignore the technical picture however. The 200 DMA is right above us and we are also extended, according to the channel.

Feel free to e-mail any comments, feedback, suggestions, or general inquiries to…

 Author

salerno.mark.a@gmail.com