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Put Options On The High Flying Stock "Sandisk" Are Difficult To Play

I have ignored this stock all year, not knowing much about it. The stock is Sandisk and it doesn't pay a dividend. Sometimes I think that the stock has gone up to much in price to quickly. Is trying to play it for the downside with one week Put options the way to go? Why try and play Puts on a stock that never seems to go down? Why not just ride the Calls up? The stock is up $52.00 on the day. At noon on a Monday here is what one series of it's "just-in-the-money" Puts look like. Do these premiums seem to be abnormally high? Yes. $59.00 dollars means $5,900.00 dollars per contract. If you are new to option trading stay away from these ones. Other stocks trading in this price range like Costco have options on them trading at much lower prices. Here is an example of what I am talking about. If we look back at a blog I did last week on Caterpillar you will see how much of the time premuim built into the pricing on these "one-week-to-expiring-options" decreas...

First Hour Monday Morning Trading In Walmart

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First it's chart. Then a look at one series of it's Call options at 9:48 a.m. Look at how they traded down to $.72 cents. Now this five minutes later. Now this another five minutes later. Would this be enough of a gain to take making it your first trade of the week? Here is how they closed on the day with the DJIA down 557 points on the day.

A Follow Up To My Recent (April 27th) " Nio" Blog

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Nio was the tenth most actively stock traded by share volume on the NYSE this week. It often makes the top five list. It's a company making Electric vehicles. One caveat is however that a few years ago this stock was was trading at a much higher price. Ironically that's when it was losing a lot of money. Now it'starting to make money for the first time. Look at it's five year chart. The short interest in Neo is around 6% which is not that big deal. It's a difficult stock to play options on. All options on stocks in this price range are difficult to play options on. Also their monthly vehicle production numbers (which somehow miraculously appear on the very first day of each month) can be all over the map. New models are always being introduced while older models seem to disappear. BYD is also experiencing the same issue. Did the stock explode this week after releasing these production numbers? No. Here is it's one week chart. Here is how the "six-serie...

Last Day Options - Tesla

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If your new to option trading you wil not have the courage to play "last-day-until-expiring options". I get that. Perhaps a mid week option trade would be better. Find a chart pattern that looks interesting and buy yourself a three day ride. Or safer yet, buy an option on Friday at the close with five days of trading life left in them. Correctly picking the right directional movement over such a time period would instill a feeling of confidence in what you are doing. If you fail in such an adventure what would I advise you to do? Give up? No. Study harder. Now let me throw this one at you. Here is a recap of a blog I posted yesterday where an option trade doubled in price in just less than ten minutes. In all fairness most newbie option traders would not be purchasing "out-of-the-money"Call options which expire in only a few hours. What I am about to say may sound a tad stupid. If you want to jump into the world option option trading Tesla is one of the top stocks...

Ford. A Chart You Don't See Very Often

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Here it is. What's going on? Something must have happened to drop the stock down. How did the "12 series of Calls" and the "11.5 series of Calls" trade on the day? What about the "12 series" of Puts? So what happened? So how did Ford finish out the week? The most obvious trade of this week was to buy Ford Calls on the dip after the release of good news. How hard was that? Yes with patience youu can learn to teach youself how to play short term options.

So Boeing Is Down On Friday Morning.

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It's only down a touch. Here is what one series of it's Calls are doing. Now this. All that in just under ten minutes. * Was that a wise decision? Look at this. Yes it was. Now there is a new question. What's going to happen next? Here above is it's chart mid afternoon. It's best just to stay away because of the high degree of risk. Now look at how it's trading later on in the afternoon at 3:05 p.m.. Look at these mid afternoon Puts. Lets pause for a second and think this out. Getting in around 2:00 p.m. and getting out at the 3:00 p.m. deadline was another option open to traders late in the trading session. Last hour trading patterns share similarites with early morning trading.

Caterpillar - An Earning Report

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It was stronger than expected. In a blog I did last week on April 24th here is how the 830 series of Calls were trading that day. The open interest and volume of trading in the Calls at that time was next to nothing. Here is how they traded today on their earnings report news. They more than tripled in price in one day. Only 29 contracts traded on the day! Traders were afraid to shell out the large amount of cash $2,771.00 to be exact, to be in the game. That's just to much money. The return was $7,235.00. That is more than a double. Was I wrong for not recommending them as a purchase? I was saying that Caterpillar was trading at lofty levels and I followed the Puts instead which ended up going sideways for a few days. There is always a bit of nervousness just before earning releases. The game with Caterpillar will continue. Now this. It now looks like it's going to go to $900.00 or even $1,000.00 per share.

Options On Stocks In The $4.00 Range "Big Bear a.i."

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First a look at the one day chart on a company named Big Bear a.i.. The second chart just above is a five day chart so the jump I am talking about happened on the fourth day of this five day chart which was Tuesday. On Wednesday as you can see the stock slightly retreated. Next you can see how on Tuesday the four series of Calls went from $.04 to $.25. I have blogged about this company in the past. A few months ago this stock was on the most active list week-after-week. Here is it's "year-to-date" chart. This story keeps going. The stock ended having a lessor bounce on Thursday. It was an interesting bounce with a portion of it happened at exactly 2:00 p.m. and lasted for about an hour. Here is what the bounce looked like and this time we are looking at the 3.5 series of Calls which is a lower series of "in-the-money" Calls than we looked at two days ago. Slightly "in-the-money" Calls are the best options to use in situations like this. While al...