Ciena Corp (CIEN) – Ciena has been a strong outperformer since gapping higher in early November and breaking to new highs over 60. While many key stocks act sluggish, CIEN is a tech name with a bull flag forming near recent highs. These high tight flag patterns after a runaway gap tend to see continuation drift higher. Seasonally CIEN fits the bill for strong bullish bias in November and December. The last 10 years as shown below has seen CIEN higher in December 8 out of 10 years for an average return of +5.5%. More recently the last 5 years have been even stronger, with the stock up 4 of the last 5 Decembers with an average gain of +8.5%. Being part of the XLK tech sector helps as Technology has held up better than other indices during the small correction in markets to end November. CIEN is up around 17% YTD and can extend these gains into its strong seasonal period as it looks to breakout above 10 year highs. CIEN doesn’t see a lot of frequent options activity but in September saw a buyer of April $55 calls at $7.80 for $312k in premium which are still in open interest.