Athleisure clothing brand Lululemon Athletica Inc (NASDAQ:LULU) was last seen up 2.7% to trade at $183.27, after the company inked a deal with the NFL and Fanatics to launch an apparel collection for each of the 32 teams. The partnership is slated to launch tomorrow and will feature items for both women and men.
Today's boost has the equity trading at its highest level since a post-earnings bear gap in early September. Though still sporting a 52% year-to-date deficit, the shares are now 15% above their Sept. 15, five-year low of $159.25.
Short interest has been rolling back, off 4.6% during the most recent reporting period, but still accounts for 8% of the stock's total available float. It would take shorts roughly two days to buy back their bearish bets.
Puts have been more popular than usual over the last two weeks, per Lululemon Athletica stock's 10-day put/call volume ratio of 1.14 at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), which ranks higher than 91% of readings from the past year. Should this bearish sentiment begin to unravel, it could trigger more tailwinds for the security.
In fact, this may already be the move, with calls trading at double the intraday pace already today. So far 22,000 calls have been exchanged, with the weekly 10/31 185- and 190-strike calls seeing the most attention and buy-to-open activity at the latter.
Options are looking affordable, too. This is per the stock's Schaeffer's Volatility Index (SVI) of 40%, which sits in the 17th percentile of annual readings. LULU also tends to outperform options traders' volatility expectations, per its Schaeffer's Volatility Scorecard (SVS) of 99 (out of 100).
