Carnival Corporation (CCL) is a cruise company with two main segments of operation North American and Europe, and Asia and Australia. The company’s stock is currently trading around $40.40 in a 52 week range of $31.44-$40.47. The stock underperformed the market last year having only added 8.8% to shares prices over the past 12 months. Recent price action has been far more bullish however. Over the past 3 months the stock has rallied nearly 27%. Options action in yesterday’s trading session would suggest that traders believe this trend will continue and that 2014 will be a great year for CCL. Yesterday a trader bought more than 18,000 CCL Jan 2015 39.5 calls between $3.60 and $3.80. This is an incredibly bullish trade and a huge order relative to normal volume in CCL. This trader is betting more than $6 million on further upside in CCL through the year meaning their level of conviction is very high.
CCL is also looking bullish on a chart. Shares are trading well above the Ichimoku Cloud and the future cloud is sloping upward going forward. CCL is also trading on a new 52 week high and is well above all of its major moving averages. We believe that the unusual options activity and strong chart setup in CCL are great signals for a long. CCL is our top pick for 2014 based on the incredibly bullish orderflow we’ve seen and the strong technical. We currently have positions in several call lines in CCL and as of today they are our largest positions.
Andrew Keene
http://keeneonthemarket.com/
