Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEH)

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEH)

    The next Bear Stearns? Lehman Brothers stock continued to fall Friday with a 6% move to the downside as investors worry about the solvency of the brokerage. Friday capped off a week of losses totally 17%. Analysts dropped the price targets and lowered their expectations for the company during the week. Over the past 90 days analysts have lowered their quarterly expectations from $1.64 a share down to the current expectation of 0.51 cents a share.

    The option markets also showed fear that the stock will continue to tumble as investors bought up puts heavily on Friday. Puts in the front month of June saw heavy action at four strike prices all below the current price, 35, 30, 25, and 22.5. July puts at the strike price of $35 also saw a lot of buying with 13,151 options traded. This would be the safer way to play a downturn in the stock giving the investor an extra month to see the decline.