Options Strategist Harvests Gains on EQIX Call Butterfly Spread

Today’s tickers: EQIX, OMX, TER & JBLU EQIX  - Equinix, Inc. –  In the final trading week of 2010 we reported seeing one options strategist purchase a sizable bullish call butterfly spread on Equinix. It has been nearly four months to the day since the investor paid a net premium of $3.10 per contract for the June $85/$100/$115 call ‘fly, and it looks like the trader is reeling in substantial profits today by unraveling the position. Shares in the provider of global data center services are currently up 3.8% to stand at $100.30 as of 11:20am in New York. The company reported first-quarter earnings of $0.53 a share on Wednesday, which beat average analyst expectations of $0.30 a share in net income for the quarter. The trader responsible for the bullish spread nearly hit the nail on the head. On December 29, 2010, shares in Equinox closed the session at $81.20. Since then, the stock has climbed roughly 23.5% to today’s price. While the upward move in the price of the underlying happened a bit more quickly than estimated, the trader’s predictions for the magnitude of the move were pretty much spot on. It appears the investor closed out the spread this morning, selling 15,000 calls at the now deep in-the-money June $85 strike for a hefty premium of $16.20 each, bought back the 30,000 short calls at the June $100 strike for a premium of $4.70 each, and sold 15,000 of the June $115 strike call options at a premium of $0.30 a-pop. The trader takes in net premium of $7.10 per contract by closing out the spread, and therefore realizes net profits of $4.00 per contract, or around $6 million in total, after accounting for the initial cost of buying the spread at $3.10 apiece. Had Equinix’s shares risen more slowly, hitting $100.00 at expiration in June, the investor could have realized maximum potential profits of $11.90 per contract. But, in the end the investor’s predictions for EQIX’s performance and the…