Top Takes From RealMoney

The RealMoney contributors are in the business of trading and investing all day on the basis of ongoing news flow. Below, we offer the top five ideas that RealMoney contributors posted today and (if applicable) how they played those ideas.

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Santander's Tell

By Don Dion
6:22 a.m. EDT

The hugely successful Santander (BSBR) IPO, which is the largest worldwide IPO of 2009, is a great sign that investors are craving to own growing banking franchises. This deal was massively oversubscribed. This bodes well for Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC). Look for these companies to continue to power up today. As taxpayers, we may not be happy with these banks, but the developed and emerging nations need these types of institution to grow.

Position: None

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Market Tells and Brazil: Know Your Edge

By Kristen Koh Goldstein
10:05 a.m. EDT I agree with other commentators that it could be dangerous to follow market tells (e.g., Goldman Salchs (GS) and Apple (AAPL)) that are followed by everyone else -- where is the edge? You need to go a level deeper. When Bank of America (BAC) call premiums collapse over a very short time period (magnitude of moves not explained by share-price movement), I know that we are getting too negative/oversold for the short term. Such moves tell me that hedge funds (who are all overweight Bank of America) are going short and/or protecting their favorite longs (like Bank of America) by buying puts or writing calls aggressively -- like here, where the $20 strike January calls collapsed from almost a dollar to about 20 cents over a few days, and here, where the same calls collapsed from over a dollar to about 60 cents. Market tells work until they don't. Of course, now that I have written this post, this indicator will stop working.

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