My Merger Arbitrage Journal

Closed out my JUNO short puts to increase my portfolio margin... some movement in BIVV put options priced me out of closing... curiously JUNO $30 Mar 18 Puts are didn't spike up in price but BIVV $100 Jul 18 Puts spiked from $1.20 to $1.75 yesterday with underlying little changed... volatility spike?

Market was up big but my merger arb stocks didn't respond sadly... wanted to buy more Monsanto.
 
i closed all my JUNO and BIVV short puts options to concentrate on MON... Now left with Mar $30 short AKRX puts, MON, TWX and BG. A little bit worried about BG as there is still no indication if the negotiations are successful for a merger but my position is not very big.
 
closed out BG with a loss as well.. with the bad results and conference call by BG, sounds like they are not trying to sell the entire company.
 
Another big clanger in AKRX as i am short puts at $30. Only a few puts but a big enough loss. The good news is Monsanto's merger is moving well along to EU approval and hopefully DOJ as well. Time Warner's case is very much a coin flip.
 
Just started reading your journal. Institutional risk-arb traders rarely sell vol as the average IV-drop is roughly 20% in the targets (GS-data). It gets worse from there. One of GS' favorite trades during the late-Rubin era was to double the OI in short vola on the day the deal was made public (or before!).

Vols get crushed that it's is great time to buy 90D calls on targets as a proxy for the shares.
 
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