The shares of Google parent Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) just hit a record high of $1,333.92 earlier last month, and have been consolidating just south of here, with pressure at $1,317 keeping GOOGL from reclaiming these mid-month highs. And while the security is off 1.2% to trade at $1,288.19, it's running right into recent support at its 40-day moving average with a 23.3% gain for the year.
Historically, the holiday season has meant big returns for the search engine giant, and in fact, it is the only FAANG stock to show up on Schaeffer's Senior Quantitative Analyst Rocky White's list of best stocks for December. Per White's data, GOOGL has seen a monthly gain during eight of the past 10 years, and averaged a 2.06% pop. A similar move would put the equity at $1,314.53.
Analysts are betting on a bounce for the tech stock, with 27 of the 30 in coverage calling it a "buy" or better, with not a single sell to be seen. What's more, the consensus 12-month target price sits all the way up at $1,462.02 -- a region not yet touched on the charts.
The options pits have been full of bulls, too. During the past 10 days 1.59 calls have been bought for every put on the the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX). This sentiment is echoed by Alphabet's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.95, which sits in the 34th percentile of its annual range, indicating that short-term options players have been reaching for calls at a quicker than usual clip.
That being said, for those wanting to speculate on GOOGL's next move, options are incredibly cheap right now. The security's Schaeffer's Volatility Index of 16% sits lower than all but 4% of readings from the past year, meaning options players are pricing in extremely low volatility expectations for the equity right now.