Veeva SystemsThis is a daily chart of Veeva Systems (VEEV), a healthcare technology company that provides cloud solutions for the global life sciences industry.
When the company reported its earnings on August 31st the stock price subsequently gapped down, as shown in the chart above. From a probability standpoint, this gap is likely to be filled for the reasons below.
1. The gap is a monthly candle gap and these usually close.
Unfilled gaps on the monthly charts are generally quite rare, especially for assets that have never left a monthly gap before. As shown in the chart below, VEEV has never left a gap on its monthly chart before.
2. The gap is below the lower regression channel line. A regression channel is used to measure how far above or below an asset is trading from its mean. Since price generally tends to mean revert, it's highly unlikely that a gap below the lower channel line, (which in this case represents two standard deviations below the mean), will never be filled. It's more likely that the gap will not only be filled, but will be filled quite rapidly. The assumption I make in using this regression channel is that it is statistically valid and data are normally distributed. If true, then there's only a small probability that VEEV's monthly candle will close the month so far below the lower line of the regression channel. Therefore, it's likely that price will be drawn back up to the mean, and thus the gap will be filled.
Here's a close up view:
3. Price gapped below an important Fibonacci level that has been holding, and likely will continue to hold, as support. See the chart below.
Here are some close up views:
At a minimum, price will very likely push back into the 180s.
The quarterly chart shows long lower wicks at this Fibonacci level, indicating that it is holding as support. With further momentum to the downside waning as shown by the Stochastic RSI, there's little reason to believe this Fibonacci level will fail this time.
The lower wicks on the quarterly candles are also bouncing off of the exponential moving average (EMA) ribbon, which usually acts as support when price descends to it from above.
Strategy
With this said, I noticed that someone is already sweeping the call options. They swept hundreds of out-of-the-money (OTM) call options expiring on 9/16 with a $180 strike. Clearly, this buyer believes that VEEV's price is poised to quickly return at least to the Fibonacci support level of $180.97.
If you don't know what an options sweep is, it simply refers to an instance in which options are purchased right at the ask price. In most cases, buyers place a limit buy at the mid point of the bid-ask spread or at a lower target price. Market participants usually only buy at the ask price if they're in a rush to buy and/or if they have a high confidence about a certain market move and want to guarantee their entry while also not tipping the market off about their anticipated market move. Sweeps can also refer to when a large buyer wants to obfuscate their entry by splitting their large order into a lot of smaller parts to sweep the entire order book without tipping off the market as they would have if they placed a single large limit order. Understanding sweeps can help you understand what smart money is doing. It's very rare that retail traders sweep the order book because it's very expensive, and for a smaller portfolio (less than a million) it can be extremely risky. Therefore, smart money is usually the market participant who sweeps the order book.
Personally, I find this call sweep to be risky (assuming that it's not part of some kind of a hedge) since although we have a high confidence that the gap may close, we don't know within what time frame it will do so. Rather than sweeping a call option with a strike price of $180 that expires on 9/16 a safer though less lucrative trade would be to sell a cash-secured put with a strike price of $180 and which expires on 9/16. Doing this gives you much higher odds of winning but is profit limited.
If the price goes to $180 or higher at expiration, you win the full premium since the put you sold will not be exercised.
If the price is below $180 but above the breakeven price at expiration, or if the price is below even your breakeven price, then you may be forced to buy shares of VEEV at $180, but you can simply hold those shares until the gap closes (or longer if you think price is going higher). Therefore in this case you still do not lose money, and still make the premium as profit.
The only plausible scenario whereby you would lose money would be if VEEV's price continued to plummet and never recovers. Although this would be incredibly unlikely, it is still possible. You can nonetheless still hedge against even this risk by using a put spread to limit loss potential to a ratio that meets your risk management strategy. Therefore you can safely take a very high probability trade while managing risks well. Successful trading is mostly determined by how well you manage risks.
Finally, since options are leveraged, one should always try to time their entry as perfectly as possible by using shorter timeframe (hourly or 4-hour) charts, especially if the option's expiration is close. For example, you can see that the 4 hour chart for VEEV is showing momentum building back to the upside. This is what you want to see if you're going to sell a put option strategy that expires on 9/16.
These are just my thoughts and they are definitely not meant to be trading advice. As always, anything can happen. September can often be a volatile month and is prone to declines. Options trading is risky and can result in complete loss. Trade at your own risk.
If you would like me to post more strategies like this on here leave a boost or a comment below so I can gauge interest. Thank you.
If you're new to trading and don't understand the options trading language that I used above, I would recommend Project Finance to learn about options. I learned a ton about options trading from this channel and the content is always high-quality: www.youtube.com
If you want to learn more about the basics of trading, you can see my post linked below for 10 rules for successful trading.
