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Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation (TKMR) is seeing an increase in bullish activity
Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation (NASDAQ:TKMR) is extending yesterday's gains, adding 15.1% today to hit $16.00, after providing a promising update on its TKM-PLK1 Phase I/II clinical study. Not surprisingly, bullish speculators have taken notice.
In TKMR's options pits, volume is running at 10 times what's expected around midday, with calls trading at 16 times their normal intraday pace. Moreover, eight of the security's 10 most active options are calls, with the weekly 1/2 13 and January 2015 17 strikes leading the way, with over 400 contracts exchanged for both.
Digging deeper, it appears the contracts are being bought to open. The former group believes TKMR will continue traveling north of the $13 mark through the close this Friday, Jan. 2, when the weekly series expires. Meanwhile, the latter group hopes to see the stock topple the $17 level by the close on Friday, Jan. 16, when front-month contracts cease trading.
Today's price action offers some hope for a stock that has been struggling of late. In the past three months, TKMR has underperformed the broader S&P 500 Index (SPX) by a staggering 46 percentage points, due in part to overheard pressure from its descending 30-day moving average. However, the stock hurdled this key trendline with today's gains, and is poised to close above it for the first time since mid-October.
Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation (NASDAQ:TKMR) still has a long way to go if it wants to catch its consensus 12-month price target, however. At $34.80, the figure more than doubles the stock's current level.