A Washington-based law firm cleared Kodak CEO Jim Continenza of insider trading
The shares of Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE: KODK) are up 54.7% at $9.64 this morning, one of the top percentage gainers on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), after Washington-based law firm Akin Gump cleared CEO Jim Continenza of insider trading in relation to Kodak's $765 million U.S. government loan to produce pharmaceutical ingredients.
On the charts, the security has been mostly trading sideways for the past month. In late July, shares gapped to an all-time-high of $60, but quickly pulled back to below the $20 level. Now, the security seems to be on its way higher, with support from the 80-day moving average. Longer term, the stock is up an impressive 234.9% year-over-year.
Digging into a more technical backdrop, short interest on KODK rose 92.1% in the last two reporting periods. The 16.54 million shares sold short account for 38.5% of the stock’s total available float. At the equity's average pace of daily trading, it would take less than a day for shorts to cover their bearish bets.
The tide seems to be already shifting in Kodak stock's options pits. In the last 50 days, 383,063 puts have been exchanged, compared to 204,474 calls. So far today, however, 124,000 calls have crossed the tape, which is eight times the average intraday amount, and nearly double the number of puts traded. Most popular is the monthly September 10 call, followed by the 9 put in the same series, with new positions being opened at both.