Yo Pit Crazies!

So I was talking to one of my fellow editors at OptionPit who helps me with my daily market observations. 

He used to be a pro trader and we swap trades back and forth all day long, and he said, “Andrew, you’ve got to take a look at the Paramount-Skydance combination. Dude, there’s no way Larry Ellison lets this fail.”

I said, “Okay, alright, I’ll take a look at it.”

Of course, I look at things a couple of ways. 

A clip on Twitter of Stanley Druckenmiller said it best: “Well, sometimes I look at the charts and sometimes I look at the fundamentals.”

I looked at the PARA chart, and it looked interesting; mostly because it’s a new combination. The old Paramount is gone, and now we have a combination of Paramount and Skydance.

The thing about it is Larry Ellison’s son, and I guess his daughter and their family, are also in the movie production business. They partner with Tom Cruise and things like that. But at this point, they just bought Paramount. And I’ll remind you again, like my editor said: there’s no way Larry Ellison lets this company fail.

I Dug Into the Option Fingerprints

So I dug into the option fingerprints, and lo and behold, there was some open interest very early on because the options carried over from the Paramount stock days. You can see here from this app: this was the August 12th, 2025 snapshot of the options. There’s pretty generous open interest in what I would call “option fingerprints,” which is long-term open interest in the options, or what we call open interest in LEAP options. LEAPs are Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities.

Now you can see here that even though Paramount-Skydance is a relatively new company, it had open interest from that takeover. 

And I was surprised at how much the open interest jumped.

There’s a huge increase in open interest out to January 2027. 

Again, this is one year out. Generally, institutions like to play out there because they like to hold for the big home run. 

Very nice leverage buying long-term options.

It’s Interesting, But Still Has Some Hurdles to Cross

So I’m like, “Okay.” It’s not enough for our Flash 7, it’s not hitting all my criteria yet. The story is compelling (you know, reforming the networks). It has made a low and it has bounced back, so that’s a big deal for me.

Again, I’d like to see a little earnings growth before I jump in for what would make it sort of a Flash 7 trade for me. But for right now, very compelling.

And you know, it’s hard to bet against a guy like Larry Ellison, who has been so successful at Oracle.

So again, when you look at how open interest has changed in the long term, it gives you lots of great trade ideas. 

Or you can have me do that part for you. 

Click here to join me at Flash 7. 

We start live, Monday. 

Thank you! 

AG