Our indicators showed a put-skew on Boeing and Visa before earnings
Wall Street is considering a barrage of earnings releases this morning, and two of the biggest names making headlines are Dow stocks Boeing Co (NYSE:BA) and Visa Inc (NYSE:V). Below is a brief breakdown of the news and numbers to watch for the shares of BA and V today.
For Boeing, traders are considering the fallout from the company's 737 MAX controversy, but the aerospace juggernaut said it would need to issue a new full-year forecast at a later date due to the ongoing uncertainty. The company also said engine issues will delay the first flight for its 777X jet to 2020. Overall, BA posted its largest quarterly loss in a decade, recording an adjusted second-quarter loss of $5.82 per share.
In response the shares are trading down 1.1% to $369.12. Despite a recent uptick in call options trading, short-term traders were actually put-heavy coming into today's post-earnings session. This is based on Boeing's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 1.15, which ranks in the 93rd annual percentile. Taking a more broader view, the top four open interest positions on BA are all puts. Others may have been showing skepticism elsewhere, since short interest popped 11% in the last reporting period -- though short interest in total still accounts for a negligible 1% of the blue chip's float.
Turning to Visa, the stock is trading 0.3% in the red despite an earnings beat, last quoted at $180.15. Still, most of the analyst attention so far has been positive, with nearly a dozen price-target increases coming through. Citigroup analysts set the highest bar at $209, well into record-high territory, while KBW sees momentum in Europe helping the company going forward.
V's SOIR also painted a put-skewed picture, coming in at 1.05. While this shows just a slight edge for put open interest over call open interest in contracts expiring within three months, the reading ranks in the high 96th annual percentile, revealing such a setup to be extremely rare. Looking at action from just the past 10 days, there was heavy interest in the weekly 7/26 175-strike put, along with the 165 and 170 puts in the August series.