Options Corner: Edwards Lifesciences Poor Start To The New Year Offers A Contrarian Opportunity

Edwards Lifesciences (NYSE:EW) really needed a strong result for the fourth quarter and it appears that it may have done just enough to convince investors to reconsider the bullish narrative for EW stock. Technically, the report was mixed, with earnings per share of 58 cents missing the consensus view of 62 cents. However, revenue of $1.57 billion beat analysts' target of $1.54 billion.

Ultimately, the bottom-line miss didn't seem to matter, with EW stock rising more than 2% following the disclosure. This dynamic speaks to the broader concern with trading securities ahead of a major announcement. It's very common among retail culture to promote the idea that certain market gurus can feel out results before they materialize. Even generously accepting this premise, you never know how the market will respond.

In other words, you have to be prescient and an expert psychologist. And without a correlation between earnings performance and share price outcome, the unknown unknowns of pre-earnings gambles, in my opinion, represent a nightmare. Post-earnings, at least a good chunk of the unknowns have been washed over.

Moving forward, I find the volatility skew of EW stock rather curious and enticing. Volatility skew is a screener that identifies implied volatility (IV) — or a stock's potential kinetic output — across the strike price spectrum of a given options chain. For the March 20 expiration date, the smart money's baseline urgency for hedging is limited, while premiums for convexity at the tails is elevated.

On the lower strike boundaries, put IV is noticeably priced higher than call IV, implying demand for downside insurance. On the upper boundaries, call IV rises above its put equivalent, reflecting demand for upside convexity (should EW stock significantly higher).

What's perhaps most significant is the information by omission. For strikes near the at-the-money price, the volatility skew curvature is flat, indicating a rather neutral profile. Given that EW stock is down roughly 8% on a year-to-date basis — and only up less than a percent over the past six months — you would expect greater downside insurance.

You don't see that and that could present a contrarian opportunity.

Establishing The Trading Parameters Of EW Stock

While we now have a general understanding of smart money sentiments, we still don't know how this may translate into actual price outcomes. For that, we may turn to the Black-Scholes-derived expected move calculator. Wall Street's standard mechanism for pricing options anticipates that Edwards Lifesciences stock will land between $74 and $82.91 for the March 20 expiration date.

Where does this dispersion come from? Black-Scholes assumes a world where stock market returns are lognormally distributed. Under this framework, the above range represents where EW stock may symmetrically fall one standard deviation away from spot (while accounting for volatility and days to expiration).

Effectively, Black-Scholes is saying that in 68% of cases, Edwards Lifesciences stock would be expected to trade within the prescribed range 37 days from now. Honestly, it's a reasonable assumption, if only for the fact that it would take an extraordinary catalyst to drive a security beyond one standard deviation. That said, we still don't have enough information to ascertain a directional debit-based trade with confidence.

At this point, we have reached the maximum utility of first-order (observational) analyses. Yes, we understand what the smart money may be thinking and we can see how the premiums for kinetic insurance may translate to a price dispersion. But we don't know where EW stock is likely to end up.

What we have here is the classic search-and-rescue (SAR) conundrum. EW may be mathematically treated as a shipwrecked survivor. Black-Scholes has identified that a distress signal went out somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The expected move calculator has identified the search parameters, a conical envelope of possible EW drift locations.

Unfortunately, we have limited resources so we can't just search everywhere within the envelope for one missing survivor. We need to be smart about this and reduce uncertainty one step further with a second-order (conditional) analysis. That's where the Markov property comes into view.

Narrowing The Probability Space For Edwards Lifesciences Stock

Under Markov, the future state of a system depends entirely on the present state. Colloquially, forward probabilities should not be calculated independently but be assessed in context. Extending the SAR analogy, different ocean currents — such as choppy waves versus calm waters — can easily influence where a shipwrecked survivor is likely to drift.

Here's how we can use the Markov property to narrow the probability space for Edwards Lifesciences stock. In the last 10 weeks, EW printed only three up weeks, leading to an overall downward slope. This 3-7-D sequence would be defined in our model as the present state. There's nothing special about this quantitative signal, per se. However, it represents a specific type of ocean current.

Because different currents will likely cause a different drift pattern, these tendencies should be reflected in a probabilistic framework. The problem with Black-Scholes is that its assumptions are calculated independent of structure. That's why expected move calculators are always perfectly symmetrical — the math doesn't allow it to be any other way.

Fundamentally, expected moves are "safe" in that they don't really make a claim. But because they only speak in possibilities rather than probabilities, they cannot provide traders with an edge. Any claims to the contrary are misleading.

Assuming that you accept the Markov-based premise, under 3-7-D conditions, EW stock would be expected to drift between $75 and $89 over the next 10 weeks, with probability density peaking near $85. This data is calculated through enumerative induction (of past analogs of the quant signal) and Bayesian-inspired inference to account for the small sample sizes involved.

Over the next five weeks, the upper distribution is relatively the same as over the next 10 weeks. The only difference is that in the closer weeks, there is a higher risk of EW stock dipping below the spot price, which makes sense given the limited time span.

Considering the market intelligence above, the trade that arguably makes the most sense is the 82.50/85 bull call spread expiring March 20. If EW stock rises through the $85 strike at expiration, the maximum payout would be over 257%. Further, the breakeven price sits at $83.20, improving the trade's probabilistic credibility.

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