CAT Puts

Back on Thursday I said don't hang onto First Solar Calls going into the Friday trading session after it dropped mid week about $30.00 in one day. Why be stuck in a one day option position just after it had a major drop? Revisit that blog if you like. Now let's move forward to Monday afternoon on January 12th. Here is how First Solar is now doing. It has had a bounce. This time we are looking at it's "this-weeks", Call options. Notice the open interest number? Those were mostly all positions opened up last week by forward thinking option players. Now this. Visa. Last week Trumph suggested after the markets closed on Friday that he wants to cap interest rates on credit cards at 10% for one year. Today is Monday afternoon. Look at Visa's one week chart. Visa dropped $10.00 on the Monday opening, in reaction to this news. Now look at the action in the 340 series of Calls. Lets better look at this activity from a different perspective. Traders who bought Call o...

It's Thursday morning on January 8th. Walmart opened down. But look at how Costco opened up. This time I am showing it's five day chart. A first, no one really new why but then news like below surfaced. I was also searching for the news as I knew something had to be up. At one point in the morning Costco was up over $40.00. So Walmart is dropping and Costco is really shooting up. At some point Walmart has to turn around to catch some of this positive spinoff. Look at how the 100 series of Call options on Walmart shifted gears at 10:00 a.m.. Do these two stocks always trade in harmony with each other? Obviously not but there comes a time when some sort of a cause-and- effect becomes apparent. At exactly 10:00 a.m. this morning there was a realization that Walmart had to change it's direction to stay in tune with what it's big brother Costco was doing. At that time the 110 series of Calls which would be expiring the next day traded down to $90.00 per contract. Now...

Here it is. Here are the 240 series of Calls that expire in two days. $565.00 U.S. is a lot of money to shell out as an experiment. Now this. The next days action. Half of this options life has now disappeared. Now a look at its five day chart which tells a different story. I don't like chart charts that look like they are languishing sideways. This one does. Analysis explained this drop away under the guise of "macro shift's" happening within the industry, not company specific reasons. With just one trading day left I would get out. Hanging in is to big a gamble. Wednesday's index loss was almost 500 points and today's action was an across the board market rebound. Get out and start tomorrow with a clear head. Read my previous blog on Pfizer options which also traded during the same time period. *** Friday morning's early action. Yes it couldn't hold it's gain.

As a writer if you get things wrong you quicky lose all creditability. I understand that. In a blog on Pfizer last week I looked at an entire week of it's trading activities of it's series of 25.00 Calls. The exercise was exhausting. This week I am only going to pinpoint one day of it's trading. Today is Wednesday. Shown above is one series of Call options on Pfizer which only have two remaining days of trading life left in them before they expire. Most option traders dislike options on stocks in this price range for a number of reasons. Twenty five dollar stocks can wander aimlessly for extended periods of time. I get that. Then why would I be stupid enough to be looking at these Calls at this particular period of time? Two reasons. First, there is the chance Pfizer might rebound on the opening. Why? Well the DJIA closed the day down just shy of 500 points. Trumph does strange things which causes market swings. A rebound upwards could happen tomorrow morning for no reason...

It's five day and one day chart. It dipped on the opening this morning and the 'buy-on-the-dips' mentality won again. Like a $7.00 interday jump in one series of it's Call options as witnessed on the second chart below. Now it's 30 day chart. This is madness. How can a stock keep going up? Now this, a chart borrowed from a Caterpillar blog I posted on December 26th. That wasn't that long ago. It tells a different story. It shows Caterpillar dropping thirty dollars in one morning! So here we are now in a situation where Caterpillar is up $30.00 in three trading sessions. We are in the premarkets on Wednesday morning. Wednesdays can be good days for market reversals. Here are the 630 series of Puts that expire this Friday. The open interest in them as with all of Caterpillars options are very low. The stock given it's premarket pricing is expected to open slightly lower than it's closing price. This $600.00 dollar pricing is in $U.S. money so it is ...