IBM (IBM) Offering Possible 19.05% Return Over the Next 13 Calendar Days

IBM's most recent trend suggests a bullish bias. One trading opportunity on IBM is a Bull Put Spread using a strike $122.00 short put and a strike $117.00 long put offers a potential 19.05% return on risk over the next 13 calendar days. Maximum profit would be generated if the Bull Put Spread were to expire worthless, which would occur if the stock were above $122.00 by expiration. The full premium credit of $0.80 would be kept by the premium seller. The risk of $4.20 would be incurred if the stock dropped below the $117.00 long put strike price.

The 5-day moving average is moving down which suggests that the short-term momentum for IBM is bearish and the probability of a decline in share price is higher if the stock starts trending.

The 20-day moving average is moving up which suggests that the medium-term momentum for IBM is bullish.

The RSI indicator is at 75.87 level which suggests that the stock is neither overbought nor oversold at this time.

To learn how to execute such a strategy while accounting for risk and reward in the context of smart portfolio management, and see how to trade live with a successful professional trader, view more here

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LATEST NEWS for IBM

Chanos Reduces ‘Painful’ Tesla Short, Tells Musk ‘Job Well Done’
Thu, 03 Dec 2020 13:00:00 +0000
(Bloomberg) — Jim Chanos has been short Tesla Inc.’s stock for five long years. And although he’s reduced the size of the trade, he’s not done with it yet.For the first four years, he says, it wasn’t such a bad short. The electric-vehicle maker’s stock wasn’t trouncing the market.The last 12 months? That’s a different story, with Tesla climbing more than 700% and inflating its market capitalization to above half a trillion dollars. The company is now bigger than all but five members of the S&P 500 and will be added to the benchmark index later this month. Chanos has reduced the Tesla bet from the maximum short position of 5% of capital allowed at his hedge-fund firm Kynikos Associates.“It’s been painful, clearly,” Chanos said in a Bloomberg “Front Row” interview.The famed short-seller continues to takes issue with Tesla’s business model and valuation. Some investors see it as an electric-vehicle company, others view it as an autonomous-vehicle company, while still others treat it as a clean-energy play.“It’s whatever people want to believe Elon Musk is touting,” said Chanos, pointing out that Tesla’s five straight quarters of profit are due to sales of regulatory credits rather than cars. Tesla trades at about 900 times trailing earnings, and more than 150 times estimated earnings for the next four quarters.“I’ve never met Elon Musk,” said Chanos. “I’ve never had a conversation with him.”If they were to meet? “I’d say, ‘job well done so far,’” he said.By contrast, 2020 has been a tough slog for Kynikos in its 35th year. The firm has a traditional long-short hedge fund where passive index funds provide most of the long exposure, allowing Chanos to focus on the short side. Kynikos also offers a fundamentally chosen short portfolio that serves as an insurance policy for investors who are long the market.But after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to record lows in March and made clear it will step in with more help if necessary, he said few investors are worrying about significant downside risk, much less see the need to actively protect against a rising stock market.Retail investors also help keep share prices buoyant, Chanos said. While he said it’s easier than ever to find companies that look attractive to short, many bearish bets are just not working. The firm is usually correct on about two-thirds of its picks, but only one-third of its shorts are currently panning out.“Right now, people are doing really dumb things with their money. It can go on for a while, and you can lose lots of poker hands to people that are doing dumb things with their money,” said Chanos. “But over time, I would hope that basically, if you’re playing properly, you’re going to come out ahead.”The current market euphoria is also creating a “golden age of fraud” that will be exposed over time, he said. It’s a topic Chanos is well-versed in — he teaches a financial fraud class at his alma mater Yale University and made his name betting against Enron Corp. in 2000 after spotting accounting maneuvers to hide losses at the energy trading company before its collapse.What’s different this time, Chanos said, is that investors keep bidding up stock of companies with questionable financial statements until the firms themselves finally admit wrongdoing. Suspected or actual frauds currently make up 30% to 35% of Kynikos’ short portfolio versus the typical 10% to 15%.Chanos spoke with Bloomberg in a wide-ranging interview, including his skepticism about International Business Machines Corp.IBM and Big TechIBM, whose revenue has shrunk in seven of the last eight years, is one of Chanos’ biggest short positions. Chanos said IBM has mitigated its deterioration through “financial engineering” — most recently with plans to spin off its legacy IT-services business.“The dead giveaway to us that the spinoff is being done for financial engineering reasons was that they’re saying it’s going to take the better part of almost 18 months to do,” he said. “And that’s crazy.”Representatives from Tesla did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for IBM declined to comment.Chanos said IBM is an anomaly in the industry because it’s large and shrinking at a time when most tech companies are growing. As for mega-cap names such as Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc., “they’re very, very high return-on-capital businesses,” he said. “If they trade at 20 times cash flow or something like that in a market with low interest rates, that certainly might be an appropriate valuation.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

IBM and Air Canada Partner to Transform the Aeroplan Loyalty Program
Thu, 03 Dec 2020 11:46:00 +0000
MONTREAL, Dec. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — IBM Canada today announced its collaboration with Air Canada, the country's largest airline, on the recently launched Aeroplan program, which includes a new web and mobile digital experience, designed and built in partnership with IBM (NYSE: IBM).

Unknown Nation-State Attacking Vaccine Cold Chain in Phishing Scam, IBM Finds
Thu, 03 Dec 2020 11:00:00 +0000
(Bloomberg) — Nation-state hackers have been masquerading the past few months as one of the world’s largest cold-chain providers in a global email phishing scam seemingly aimed at spying on entities essential to the global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, researchers said.X-Force, a digital security unit at force at International Business Machines Corp., discovered an email operation in which hackers claimed to represent Qingdao Haier Biomedical Co., a China-based company and one of the world’s largest cold-chain suppliers, making equipment to store and deliver materials at cold temperatures. In at least one copy of the spam email, the fake Haier representative sought to purchase about 500 vaccine refrigerators to bolster their temperature-controlled logistical services.The user, who purports to serve as Haier’s project manager in Africa, promised a $220,000 upfront payment, according to an email provided by the IBM security researchers. Attached to the email is a draft contract entitled, “RFQ – UNICEF CCEOP and Vaccine Project.” But the HTML attachment was actually a malicious file that, if opened, would prompt the recipient to share their secret login credentials with the attacker.IBM’s security team has been researching Covid-related cyber-attacks since the early days of the pandemic. Based on the sophistication of this attack, which targeted a variety of industries related to vaccine storage and delivery before hackers cleaned up their digital footprints, researchers believe the campaign was launched by a nation-state, but declined to speculate on which one.It’s unclear if any victims fell for the scam. But if they did, the harvested credentials could help an attacker “gain insight into internal communications, as well as the process, methods and plans to distribute a Covid-19 vaccine,” IBM Security said in a statement.As pharmaceutical companies and governments the world over prepare for the logistical puzzle of disseminating hundreds of millions of vaccines to help blunt the coronavirus, cyber-criminals continue to leverage the urgency and despair of the global pandemic for intelligence and monetary gain. In this case, the phishing scheme spanned six countries and targeted European organizations that bolster immunization in poor countries.In late November, the Atlanta-based cold chain company Americold Realty Trust said it was the target of a cyber-attack. The company believes the attack has been contained, but hadn’t “completed its investigation,” Americold said in a Nov. 30 regulatory filing. The company didn’t expect the hack to impact operations.Americold didn’t respond to requests for comment on the scope of the attack and the role email phishing may have played.Covid-19 phishing emails are one of the most prolific scams in recent memory. Since late-January, attackers have duped recipients into opening emails with subject lines related to the virus. And victims the world over, living in fear of the pandemic and its economic impact, have opened these emails and clicked on their infected links and attachments. Doing so has led to compromises of individual devices and corporate networks, and ultimately to the theft of personal and company data. Employees working from home during the pandemic without sufficient cybersecurity protections have exacerbated these problems.“As we shift toward distributing a vaccine for Covid-19, the logistics of this operation will become extremely critical,” said John Hultquist, a senior director at the cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. “Seemingly mundane security issues could have major repercussions to such a complex and important effort.”As Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. work with U.S. and global regulators to approve their Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use, global distribution has already started. Pfizer and United Airlines transported the first mass air shipment of a vaccine from Brussels to Chicago in late November.Pfizer’s vaccine must be stored at ultra-cold temperatures to avoid contamination. But maintaining temperature controls once a vaccine leaves the airplane remains a challenge. In parts of West Africa, for instance, temperatures in mid-December range from 70 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Even states in the U.S. lack necessary capacity to store large volumes of the vaccine without spoiling.This makes cold chain companies like China’s Haier essential to global distribution. It also makes them prime targets for spoofing campaigns, said Claire Zaboeva, senior cyber threat analyst at IBM’s Security X-ForceTargets of the phishing operation have included the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, according to IBM. The agency is responsible for streamlining customs and duties as goods travel across the European Union. Attackers may see the agency as a single point of compromise to disrupt distribution across the region.Petrochemical companies were also targeted, since they produce dry ice to keep vials cool.“This was a well-prepared, precise, sophisticated campaign,” said Nick Rossmann, global lead for threat intelligence at IBM Security X-Force. “We can’t ignore the fact that there are actors who will benefit from disrupting distribution of the vaccine. If an actor could disrupt consumer trust in the vaccine, that could play a pivotal role in changing perceptions of world power.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Hackers target groups in COVID-19 vaccine distribution, says IBM
Thu, 03 Dec 2020 10:07:44 +0000
IBM and U.S. officials are sounding the alarm over hackers targeting companies critical to the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. In a blog post https://securityintelligence.com/posts/ibm-uncovers-global-phishing-covid-19-vaccine-cold-chain published on Thursday, IBM said it had uncovered “a global phishing campaign” focused on organizations associated with the COVID-19 vaccine “cold chain” – the process needed to keep vaccine doses at extremely cold temperatures as they travel from manufacturers to people's arms. Joe Slowik, a researcher at online threat intelligence firm DomainTools, said he believed IBM had stumbled upon “a subset of activity” that was part of a much wider campaign “which may not be focused on vaccines or similar activity.”

IBM warns hackers targeting COVID vaccine ‘cold chain' supply process
Thu, 03 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000
IBM is sounding the alarm over hackers targeting companies critical to the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, a sign that digital spies are turning their attention to the complex logistical work involved in inoculating the world's population against the novel coronavirus. The information technology company said in a blog post published on Thursday that it had uncovered “a global phishing campaign” focused on organizations associated with the COVID-19 vaccine “cold chain” – the process needed to keep vaccine doses at extremely cold temperatures as they travel from manufacturers to people's arms. Understanding how to build a secure cold chain is fundamental to distributing vaccines developed by the likes of Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE because the shots need to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F) or below to avoid spoiling.

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