Yahoo Bears Search for a Correction

There has been recent activity with Yahoo put options today, where a large quantity of June 25 puts were bought for thirty and thirty-five cents. These were done in quantities of 300-500 contracts, giving the traders the right to sell tens of thousands of YHOO shares. This is a bearish bet that Yahoo stock price will drop below $24.65, which these traders expect to happen by expiration on June 13. For this to occur YHOO would need to drop 4.8% over the next 15 days.

Yahoo offers personalized technology services for their clients, connecting users with the exact content they need. In turn, Yahoo sells that information to advertisers and marketers. Yahoo's CFO Ken Goldman's opinion expressed confidence in the Sunnyvale, California company. At a recent conference he remarked, “We're not afraid to make any decisions” when prompted on Yahoo's taste for acquisitions. Goldman has an eye on the mobile market, and cites the acquisitions “to help basically accelerate our progress … and continue to see the velocity of products in the mobile space.” Yahoo recently bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion, and has a non-binding bid for Hulu along with a slew of other bidders.

However, despite the leadership's confidence, the $25 puts may pay off. Yahoo is due to release second quarter earnings on July 23, 2013 with estimates at $0.30. This is $0.08 lower than Yahoo's first quarter results.

Since last fall, Yahoo has shown a bullish trend. Between early January and mid May, Yahoo has experienced 6 different peaks that were followed by a short downtrend before continuing to rise. The fastest and largest decline occurred in mid April and lasted for 4 days. The longest decline lasted 16 days in early March, and the average length of a downturn was about 9 days. In mid May, Yahoo stock reached a peak at $27.68 and has been in a downward trend ever since. This has lasted for 22 days so far, and today could be very pivotal. The bull trend lines suggest that Yahoo had broke below the support 14 days ago, and it appears that it is now acting as a resistance.

The next few days are very important when analyzing the position of Yahoo. If the stock rallies now, it would be a short term correction inside of a larger bullish trend. However, if the price begins to drop, then the old support price levels can now act as a resistance and there will be a drop in Yahoo prices, providing a profit for the traders that bought puts.