GE Gets Big Bullish Bets Ahead of Earnings
By: Traders are buying upside options in General Electric ahead of its earnings report Friday morning.
GE stock has been on a rocket ship since Dec. 1, moving from $16 to touch $19, though it has settled back to trade $18.49 as of this writing this afternoon. The company has spent more than $6 billion in acquisitions in recent months, and investors have been attracted to its 3 percent dividend yield as well as its growth prospects.
The option trading is generally mixed at various strikes, but OptionMonster's real-time tracking systems have detected unusual activity in GE's April 21 calls that began this morning in large blocks and continued throughout the day in smaller trades. About 13,300 of those calls have changed hands in a strong buying pattern for $0.12 to $0.15 against open interest of 3,732 contracts.
For those calls to turn a profit, the stock would need to gain more than 14 percent by expiration in mid-April. GE has not been above that $21 strike price since early November of 2008.
Disclosures:
Pete Najarian owns GE shares.
GE is currently the corporate parent of CNBC.
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GE Peers and Rivals:
United Technologies
Honeywell
Citigroup
Bank of America
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Options Trading School:
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Pete Najarian is a professional investor, CNBC contributor, regular co-host of CNBC's "Fast Money" and co-founder of OptionMonster.com.
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