March 24, 2015 Market Wrap Up

The S&P 500 closed negative for the second day in a row. However, volume has been rather anemic. With that said, we did see some strong housing data, as new home sales saw a rise of 8% in the month of February. The VIX was trading sub-13 for a good portion of the day, but started to gain momentum as the market started to sell off, closing at 13.62.

Some of the big movers today included Twitter (TWTR) and EBay Inc (EBAY). Last night Twitter announced that they would be testing out autoplay videos and video ads. The stock rose more than 6%. Both stocks saw heavy call buying activity. Twitter saw 2.7 times usual options volume and EBay saw 2 times usual options volume. During the day we heard some rumors of Alibaba possibly taking an interest EBay; a lot of the time this is just market noise. However, that doesn’t mean that stocks can’t move off it.

Two sectors that traders continue to stay glued on are energies and biotechnology and pharmaceutical. For a moment, the United States Oil ETF (USO) traded above $17 per share, but closed up a penny at $16.79 per share. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology (IBB) finished down, less than 1%, closing at $355.95.

On the options front, we some some heavy call buying in Peabody Energy Corporation (BTU), we saw call buyers in the weekly $6.5 call strike as well as the April $7 call strike. All in all, the activity was 3.8 times usual options volume.

Let’s take a look at what’s on schedule this week.

Economic Data:

25 March 2015- Durable Goods 8:30 AM ET
26 March 2015- Jobless Claims 8:30 AM ET
27 March 2015- GDP 8:30 AM ET

Conferences:

25 March 2015- Facebook Developer Conference

Key Earnings:

25 March 2015- APOL, FRAN, FIVE, PSUN, PVH
26 March 2015- ACN, CMC, LULU, GME
27 March 2015- BBRY, FINL

Facebook, Inc. (FB) is near 52-week highs as they enter their developer conference tomorrow. Option volatility spiked ahead of the event, the 30-day at-the-money options rose nearly 2 points, closing at 27.3%. This is a name that traders will be watching tomorrow.

We’ll back on Thursday…see you then