Apple (AAPL) exhibited highly bullish signals on Friday 10/10/08. The stock was up $8.06 from Thursday’s closing price of $88.74, to close at $96.80 and was the biggest point gainer of the Nasdaq 100 stocks. The volume on the day was 79,296,481 compared to the three-month average volume of 36,285,300.

Apple (AAPL) shares are down from 52 week high of $202.96 and a 2008 high of $194.96. Mid August, the stock was trading at $179, but has been on a straight line downwards since then, hitting a 19-month closing low $88.74 on October 9th. It seems for at least the near-term, the stock has hit bottom.

With the stock market looking to open higher on word that the U.S. government is planning on buying equity stakes in banks as part of a plan to help stem the ill-effects of the credit crisis, we would expect Apple (AAPL) stock to move up on Monday, following through on Friday’s action.

Assuming stocks do open to the upside, or the market action is not too negative when stocks open on Monday, we recommend buying Apple (AAPL) shares here up to $100. Beyond the bullish signals being exhibited in the stock itself, we are still looking for that monster rally to help stocks recoup some of the incredible loss the past couple weeks. On that, Apple (AAPL) is a buy.

For those that trade options, the November $105 calls are asking $9.25 with a $8.70 bid. The $0.55 spread is a bit wider than we would like, but if we do get the monster rally this week, we would look for Apple (AAPL) to gain 10-15 points, which would more than cover the spread.

Navivest is offering a free two-week trial to our Options Capitalist trading advisory service. The Options Capitalist is a twice weekly subscription based service and with each issue, we target 15-25% returns although we strive to exceed even those loft goals. On Friday 10/10/08, we put our subscribers in call options in Amazon (AMZN), Caterpillar (CAT), Monsanto (MON) and the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY). We are looking for 50-100% returns in each of those by Thursday 10/16/08. If you are looking for returns such as these, click here to start your free trial.  

Tags: Apple Stock  Stock Options

We have made available to readers of the Navivest Stocks and Options blog, today’s issue of our subscription based options trading advisory service, The Options Capitalist. It is an options trade on Constellation Energy Group (CEG). To download a copy, click here.

 Tags: Options Trade  Constellation Energy

Yesterday on the Navivest blog, we recommended an options trade on Joy Global (JOYG), as the company was going to be releasing its third quarter 2008 earnings this morning. We formulated the trade so that we’d make money, regardless of which way the stock moved after the earnings.

We told our subscribers and readers of the blog to buy the September 60 puts and September 70 calls according to the following ratio; a minimum of 6 puts for every 4 calls. The calls were going for $2.24 and the puts $1.20.

The earnings disappointed Wall Street expectations and the stock dropped almost 20%. We sent out an alert to our subscribers today and they exited the puts at $7.50! Factoring in our purchase of the calls, which cost $896 in total for those who went with the minimum of 4 calls and 6 puts, our profits were $2884 on a total cost of trade of $1616. This was a 178% profit in just one day.

While this was a rather exceptional trade, our Options Capitalist which goes out twice a week to our subscribers, does target 15 to 20% profit on each trade. We are offering a free two week trial to The Options Capitalist. To start your free trial, click here.

We hope all the readers of the blog entered into the free Dynamic Materials (BOOM) earnings play trade that we suggested earlier in the day. We hit it right on the money. The company came out with incredible earnings, but the stock is down in after hours trading, currently off $4.95. We hope and pray this holds, because we would be looking at profits of over 50% and if the stock continues dropping as we expect, we realize triple digit gains. Here’s hoping the market does not do something crazy and throw off the trade. The stock is now down $5.23. Keep dropping.

For those who would like more trading ideas like this, visit the Navivest site at http://www.navivest.com/services.htm and fill out the form for a free two week trial subscription to our options trading advisory services or just send us an email at navivest(@)navivest.com Be sure to remove the brackets.

Genentech (DNA) is coming out with earnings after the close of the market. We don’t know whether they’ll beat or not, so we’ve had to specially structure an options trade to play on the earnings. We are slightly leaning towards Genentech (DNA) stock dropping tomorrow but even if the stock moves up on good earnings, we make money.

Here’s the trade as we are doing it - Buy 30 July 75 calls and75 July 75 puts.

As structured, using current prices, the trade will cost $15,375. You can ammend the amount but make sure you maintain the ratio of puts to calls. For every 10 calls we buy, we are buying 25 puts. 

The calls are trading at $2.50 and the puts at $1.05. Again, for every 10 July 75 calls you buy, purchase 25 July 75 puts.  If you only wanted to spend $5,000, you’d buy 10 calls and 25 puts for a total of $5,125 before commissions.

This is not one to just watch, unless the stocks stays the same or moves less than $1.50 and even with just a $1.5 move we clear our commissions. We make more on downward moves and if the stock moves just $2 either way, we begin to make good money either side on a one day percentage basis. So get in on the trade.

Stock: LDK Solar

Symbol: LDK

Trade: Buy the July 30 calls.

Trade Rational: LDK shares have taken a beaten of late, dropping about 24% in less than two weeks. From a technical standpoint, the shares are looking to reclaim some of those lost points and we are positioning ourselves to capture the resulting gains.

Buy the LDK July 30 calls. Current prices are $3.80 on the ask side. We are looking to lock in gains of at least 15-20% over the next 7-10 trading sessions.