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Banking, finance, and taxes

Oppenheimer’s National City Upgrade Spurns Options Activity (NCC)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Right after noon today, our screen for most active call options pointed out the movements in shares of National City Corporation (NYSE: NCC).  We already noted that famed Oppenheimer banking analyst Meredith Whitney actually upgraded her rating of National City to an "Outperform" rating from a prior "Perform" rating this morning.  But because of the woes of troubled financial stocks and the hated take-under buyouts, this stock has followed most of them lower again this morning.

CALL   Strike   Volume    OpInt
OCT-08 $3.00    23,770    6,061
OCT-08 $4.00    11,705    24,897
OCT-08 $5.00    4,895      49,084
OCT-08 $6.00    2,591      59,036
NOV-08 $3.00    6,576      1,649
NOV-08 $4.00    595        10,367
JAN-09 $2.50     5,737      9,319
JAN-09 $6.00     1,925     200,668

As of 12:17 PM EST shares of National City are down 46% at $1.97 onmore than 180 million shares.  That $5.00 target didn’t seem so highbased upon Friday’s close, but now that is a gain of 150% if it isachieved.  It seems that some traders are deciding to opt of of buying stocks and using de-leveraged options strategies where they can limit their downside if a government assisted "take-under" comes their way.

Jon C. Ogg
September 29, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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