Options Traders Spark Marvell Interest (MRVL)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) was the subject of a lot of buzz today.  There wasn’t any news out on it, but there were enough options that traded today that would account for almost 5 million shares on a leveraged basis.

We asked around after several inquiries came in throughout the day, and most of the inquiries seemed to revolve around the options trading rather than anything steadfast that sounded like there was an an imminent development.  One source noted to me some "chatter" that Tokyo Electron was the name he heard that may have an interest.  The truth is that there will be know way to know if Marvell is really in play or not without knowing everything management is doing currently.  Because of it being perceived as near-fabless model, that also narrows the field.

34,933 contracts traded for the March-2008 $10 Calls, and the open interest was merely 2,188 contracts.  In the March $12.50 Calls, there were 12,517 contracts that traded hands but the open interest on that was already 30,931 contracts.

Earnings are scheduled for March 6, 2008, so it is too early for traders to start playing this in hopes that there is some earnings blowout coming.  Shares briefly traded under $10.00 recently, but they have also been cut in half over the last year.  To make things worse, shares are down from over $30.00 just two years ago.

Shares rose almost 5% today to $10.99 on above average trading volume.  On last look shares were up about another 2% to $11.23 and had traded some 300,000 shares in after-hours activity.

Jon C. Ogg
February 20, 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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