Is Something Up at the New York Times?

Somebody somewhere somehow knows something. Or at least they think they do. The put-call ratio for the New York Times‘ ($NYT) stock has soared 30-fold in the last 48 hours:

Two New York Times Co. (NYT) option trades pushed bearish wagers to the highest level ever after the publisher of the third-biggest U.S. newspaper by weekday circulation rallied to a 20-month peak.

The ratio of outstanding puts to sell the stock versus calls increased almost 30-fold in two days to 4.1-to-1 on Oct. 22, an all-time high, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A block of 8,500 January $10 puts changed hands that day after 10,000 traded at the end of last week, the data show. Times Co.’s shares climbed 37 percent this year through yesterday and touched its highest price since February 2011 last week.

“The stock has had a nice run which you may want to hedge,” Boniface “Buzz” Zaino, a money manager at Royce & Associates LLC in New York, said yesterday via phone. His firm manages about $36 billion including shares of the publisher. “You could get a near-term bearish case based on concerns about the economy for the next six months and what’s going to happen to advertising dollars.”

The stock has had an impressive run since May. At one point, NYT was at $5.88 on May 4th. Last week, the shares got as high as $11.07. The stock certainly appears to be over-priced here. Earnings are due out tomorrow.

Posted by on October 24th, 2012 at 10:58 am


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