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Caterpillar On A Hot Day

The D.J.I.A. is up going into the noon hour. Let's look at the Puts on Caterpillar at 9:43 a.m. Look at Caterpillars five day chart. Up $30.00 in five days. Question. Why didn't I talk about buying Calls on it five days ago? Two reasons. 1) It's earning report doesn't come out until February 3th and that's when a decision to predict which way the stock will go might tweak my interest. 2) Here is how Caterpillar traded on the day of it's last earning report and a comment then made by management. Notice how flat the stock traded on the few days leading up the release date. That tells me that was about to happen was truly a puzzle. The new concern now might be that Trumph with his tariffs might might cause unexpected things to happen. In any event, here we are looking at the downside on thes Puts that expire in two days time. Now here is an update on these same Puts at 12:36 p.m. The stock in the last 2.5 hours is down $1.44 and the bid and ask on these Puts ...

Towards Understanding The Usefullnes Of Long Term Call Options

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4PDP5911ZaoxBr6mfs8I2LJ638DloKe3T3Ms8w7cpaeoWHfcyFwrs/s600/Screenshot%202025-01-14%2012.29.08%20PM.png"/> Why are we looking at this? Well can you see how Ford was trading at $10.00 only five days ago. If it ever rebounded back up to that level in the next couple of days or weeks these options would probabaly jump up twenty percent. In other words, "one-year-out" Call options on stocks in this price range offer amazing leverage. The fact that they are one year out doesn't rule out the possibilty that you could be "in-and-out" of them with a decent profit in a relatively short period of time. On a differing note, options on stocks in the five dollar range can sometimes suprise. Here is a stock I talked about before it had some big moves. For now, stay clear of all Moderna and Eli Lilly Call and Put options. That plus learn to appreciate that long term options can be used for short term gains. *** The same Ford Calls the very next day on the opening. ...

A Follow Up To A Recent Blog I Did About Playing Two Week Options

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Let's begin by saying I am not a big fan of buying "two-week-out" options. Yes they cost a touch more than "one-week-out" options however that is not the reason why. I like thirty day out options and one year out options and Monday, Wednesday and Friday "one- day-options" better. So what's the matter with "two-week-out" options? Here is my answer. Back on January 25th we looked at the Interactive Brokers Group 180 series of Calls that expire on January 17th. At that time they were trading at $4.90 a contract. Here is a look at that printout I posted. Now this, a Friday January 10th printout. The DJIA closed down over six hundred points on the day. So here we are at the end of the week and we have for lack of a better word, wasted four days or almost half the life of these options. But wait. Can you see how they where down 47.66% on the day? That means on the previous closing session they were trading at $6.25 per contract. (It's ...

Learning To Pick Your Battles - Walmart One More Time.

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In the last week or so I have done four blogs on Walmart and each time I seem to show situations where traders can eke out small profits tracking the 91 or 91 series of Call options. What is the logic in such an approach? Well look at Walmarts one year chart compared to two other charts I have provided. The difference of coarse is that Walmart's trading pattern has an upwards bias. One other factor comes into play in helping to make Walmart interesting options to play. The one dollar spreads between the "bid" and "ask" unlike the two dollar and fifty cent spreads between the "bids' and "asks" on stocks like Caterpillar and Boeing. This has the effect of making small changes in a stocks price more playable. Walmart also seems to have "less chatter". What do I mean by this? Well its not like Boeing which has scares of doors coming lose on their airplanes or like Caterpillar which is having to constantly adjust the size of their workfo...

Turn Around Situations On A Tuesday

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First of all I don't really like playing one week options on stocks on a Tuesday. I would rather wait until Wednesday and look for a mid-week reset in the markets. That said, Walmart's one hour sell off on a Tuesday morning kind of tweaked my interest. Let's follow this together a see what happens. One observation. Look at the volume of trading in the lowest series of call, the 90 series. They are the ones to stand to gain the most in any mini-short-term uptick. Yet then again, maybe the stock will continue to go lower. Here is it's five day chart as of seventeen minutes earlier. Now the indexes. Now a few minutes later at 11:02 a.m. Now the same three series of Call options starting with the lowest striking priced options and the ones with the lowest trading volume. A bid of $1.01-$1.08 has now jumped to $1.22 to $1.29. Doing the math on the higher two series offers equally as impressive gains. Purchasing on contracts sizes of 10 or 20 could eke out small gai...

Towards Understanding How Some Companies Have Their Option Series Set Up Differently.

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Trying to understand what a company does is often a mindless exercise. Look at these company names. HubSpot, ServiceNow, Cloudflare, Dynatrace, Broadcom, Tradeweb Markets, Vertic and Quanta Sevices. The list of how many high tech out there is overwhelming and some of these stocks trade in the $600.00, $700.00 and $1,000 range! So when I do my little blogs tracking movements of like one dollar on Walmart that get me excited what world am I really playing in? Hold that thought. Some option traders like to play options on stocks where the striking prices and days to expiracy are structured in a different way. I now want to show you one example of what I am talking about. I will use the stock Interactive Brokers to show you how things are set up differently. There are countless other examples I could use. Now it's last five days of trading. It's up five or ten dollars in two trading sessions. Now there are two things I want to point out. First is a calendar list of when options ...