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Exxon Again

It's five day chart as of a Tuesday evening. It closed the previous day at $116.69 and spiked on the opening. That was it's best opening in days. A near double in price for sure on short term Call options. The same kind of morning spike happened two days earlier. The first twenty minutes of trading every morning is often when most of it's action happens. One thing traders know is that Exxon moves independently from what the DJIA index is doing. Here is how the 116 Calls and the 117 Calls did on the day. Up 94% and 85% respectively. All I can say is learn to pick your battles and if pick correctly, expect to be rewarded. Exxon as a trading vehicle is not going to go away. * Now a look at the December 23th 116 and 117 Calls at 11:00 a.m. The stock keeps on marching up. At this point in time there is no reason to want to try and play it. ... Would a one day chart at this point in time tell us anything? Not really. An end of the day decision on whether to try and play it...
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Monday Morning And 1,000 Contracts Traded On Hertz

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I am fishing looking at todays action. Thirty seconds ago the volumes of trading in this series was reported as 1,000. Now it's 1,004. One thousand contracts could have happened in one ticket. I was watchinng it just before it happened and the volumes of trading was zero. $5.00 options can suprise. Here is how they closed the day, up 540%. So why am I blogging aboiut this event? Well, in a recent past blog the same type of event happened. Check my November 8th blog. Look at the chart that I pulled up from that blog. When a stock jumps in one day from $5.00 to well over $6.50 and settles back again to $5.00 you know that history could repeat itself. Today was that day. One month from now we could be looking at this same event unfolding again.
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Finding A Trade To Make On Thursdays. "Walmart"

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I don't like Thursday afternoons in short term option trading. A lot of things seem to happen on Thursdays like government reports coming out. I don't buy in the final seconds of trading, Call options on Boeing, Caterpillar or Eli Lilly or hoping for a Friday morning bounce. The hope today is to do find something good to trade and walk away by early afternoon. Welcome to Walmart. Options on Walmart are tight. Other stocks like McDonalds have options which trade sloppily. Let me show you what I mean by this. Good luck trying to get a fair fill if you're buying or selling. Now the Walmart side of the story on how options trade on it. Can you see the tighter bid and ask and the higher volume of trading? Step back for a second and consider this. The stock is only up $.26 cents in the first 45 minutes of trading. What does that tell us? It's waiting to decide which way it wants to go. Now this. These Call options went on to move up to $1.71 just before noon. There was the...
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Caterpillar Drops $60.00 In Five Days - Noon On A Wednesday

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In past blogs I have mentioned how light the volume of trading is in Caterpillar options. Trading them is a challenge. Deere options are also like this. Caterpillar can and does (in recent times) swing $10.00 on any given day. It is noon on a Wednesday and this the one day of the week where you can look for reversals on "one-week" options expiring on Friday. I have talked about this many times before. Here are it's five and one day charts. Now a look at two of it's Call option series. The 560 series actually offer excellent value given how large it's morning drop was. Who cares to check the news on it? When it drops this much this quickly the bad news, if any, is already baked into the equastion. Now the second series of Call options I am showing you are $44.00 "out-of-the-money" and expire in 2.5 days. "Out-of-the-money" Calls to this extreme are a speciailty item. In layman's terms they are a longshots. They can be excellent trading veh...
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When All The Drug Stock On Your Watch List Are Down

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Can you pick just one stock on this list for a rebound? Here is my list. Now let's look at Pfizer. I don't like trading short term options on Tuesdays because I know Wednesdays are better days to be looking for meaningfull reversals. When the morning dust settles might these ones look promising for a rebound? The stock is down almost one dollar. The opening market have traders wondering if they should be buying into this dip. What happens if the markets decide to drop 500 or 700 points? Now, here we are 15 minutes later. Can you see with these "in-the-money" 24.5 Calls the option makers have widened their bids and asks. They are getting defensive as this could be an inflection point. At the same time the 25.5 Calls which we first looked at now further "out-of-the-money" have taken a beating. Here they are. Look at this chart at 10:39 a.m. Just the fact we are only about an hour into the trading session tells me that it is still to early to be looking fo...
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