Herc Holdings, Inc. (HRI) appeared on our list of compressed stocks this morning. The company rents heavy equipment to the construction industry. The 1-month implied volatility expectations have not been this low since the company began trading under this ticker symbol on July 1st of 2016.

HRI stock does not get compressed often, but you can see in the charts below that the last time HRI was compressed, the stock made a huge downmove shortly after the signal. The current chart pattern on the right looks eerily similar to that last signal.

With volatility expectations so low, the options’ relative prices are also very low. This is an option buying opportunity.

This MDM Graph compares the modeled expectations of current options prices (the orange line) to the actual distribution of stock prices over the last year (the blue histogram). You can see in the chart that HRI made big moves much more frequently than modeled options prices currently expect. This tells us that HRI options are inexpensive compared to the way the stock has moved in the past.

This Volatility Cone chart shows the volatility expectations (the yellow dots) of each term relative to the historical volatility average (the blue line) and the extreme historical volatilities (the purple lines). To learn more about the Volatility Cone, click here.  As you can see, all volatility expectations are below the 1-year historical average.  This graph confirms that current options prices are cheap relative to the stock’s movement over the past year.

The Volatility Term Structure shows that options expiring June 21st have the lowest relative cost. To learn more about Volatility Term Structure, click here. Because we are interested in buying options, we will focus on the June 21st expiration.

HRI’s stock price is compressed. Its volatility expectations and relative options prices have not been lower than they are right now. This is an option buying opportunity.

Be sure to read the ODDS Online Daily Trade Idea report to get the details of our trade ideas for HRI.

To access Odds Online Daily and be able to see any stock you are tracking in this software, click here.

Thank you,

Don Fishback