As expected the news has hit that the Nippon/U.S. Steel deal will be rejected by the Govt. The steel stocks are reacting to that news with selling pressure the past couple of days. We have positioned for this outcome with a protective put spread in U.S. Steel (X). The interesting part is that X is holding up a little better than the sector. Which means, much of this is probably already priced into that stock specifically. We will take a quick profit in our put spread as a bounce back in the shares seems likely.
Sell to close: X Dec 20th (monthly) 37.00 strike put
Buy to close: X Dec 20th (monthly) 32.00 strike put
Credit: 3.19
This locked-in a profit of +1.40 or +$140.00 per spread