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Strategies & Market Trends : Mr. Pink's Picks: selected event-driven value investments -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mad2 who wrote (4380)	10/22/1998 7:18:00 AM
From: Kip518	Respond to of 18998

U.S. OPTIONS/Big call sales in Providian Financial Reuters Story - October 22, 1998 00:04 CHICAGO, Oct 21 (Reuters) - An investment bank was a huge seller of calls on Providian Financial Corp. Wednesday, building on a previous short position in the options, a market maker at the Chicago Board Options Exchange said. The firm this morning sold some 5,000 November 70 calls on Providian, a San Francisco-based provider of credit cards and other financial products whose stock has taken a wild ride in recent weeks. "He's either long the stock and hedging or thinks the stock is going down," the CBOE market maker said. Shares in Providian dropped from a September 29 high of 87-7/16 to an October 8 low of 42-9/16, then bounced back to trade currently near 75. The company last week announced a 70 percent rise in third-quarter net income and predicted 50 percent per-share earnings growth for both 1998 and 1999. The market maker said the heavy call selling had pushed the options' implied volatility down to 60 percent from 110 percent two weeks ago in the midst of the gyrations in the stock.