Groupon, the recently public company that has received more than its share of bad press recently, actually some warm-fuzzy news about Andrew Mason: The Groupon founder was named Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur Of The Year on Sunday.
Although E&Y was dishing out the honor, its blurb congratulating Mason snagged an unattributed quote in calling Groupon "the fastest-growing company ever."
Kudos to Mason. But that's where the warm and fuzzy end.
The Wall Street Journal describes investor enthusiasm as waning somewhat on the IPO. Monday was the first day to trade Groupon's "puts" and "calls," and if you don't know what those are, Forbes has a pretty succinct (well, okay, relatively succinct) explanation.
Options are divided into two categories: calls and puts. Calls increase in value when the underlying security is going up, and they decrease in value when the underlying security declines in price. Puts increase in value when the underlying security is going down and decrease in value when it is going up. So depending on what you anticipate happening in the market, you can buy a call or a put and profit from that movement.
Etai Friedman, head of equity-derivatives trading at MKM Partners, told the WSJ that "The stock is hard to borrow, and shorting is very expensive. This flows through to the options markets, making the puts relatively more expensive."
Currently, Groupon's stock is at $24.07. Again, it'll be interesting to see how Black Friday impacts all this. Don't underestimate Groupon's Black Friday's magic mojo.
