Featured

McDonalds Again And A Follow Up To Yesterday's Blog..

Some option traders on Friday mornings just want to be in and out in the first hour or so of trading on short term options they feel comfortable trading. In the second half of the day most of the action calms down. Take your winnings and run. McDonalds sold off a little bit yesterday afternoon and firmed up a bit towards the closing. Could this "mostly downtrend" continue? Here is a partial look at the opening bell's action, today a Friday however let us first look at how the stock traded yesterday. Now a look at it's trading pattern at 9:32.22 a.m. Now this, McDonald's jumps up $4.98 and the 317.50 Puts we followed yesterday which are now "out-of-the-money" acted accordingly. During the fist 2.22 minutes of trading they traded down to 34 dollars a contract. Now this. In the first three minutes of trading the stock jumped a bit and started to come off a touch. These Call options where not attacting all that much attention. The bid and ask jumped up ...
Post a Comment

Apple Again... A Strong Option Trading Stock Some Players Exclusively Play

Trading Apple Calls and Puts can be a full time, do nothing else adventure. Massive volumes trade on these options. Large swings follow the "at money" Call and Put options which means that if this stock is trading at 133.50, the minute to minute action will be the options with the 133.00 and 134.00 striking prices. It's Friday morning thirty minutes into the day. Apple closed the previous day at 133.41. The 134 Apple Puts which expire today closed the previous day at .90. So what happened next?
Apple came off in price on the opening which was a continuation of it's previous day's trend. Then, about ten minutes into the market the opening strenght of the market became apparent, a 200 point opening rally. Look at the value of the 134 Puts. They dropped to a low of .61 as Apple started to rebound slightly. Then another reversal as Apple decided to move down again. The Puts jumped back up again to over 1.00. To recap, a two hundred point rise in the D.J.I. on the opening "lifted the boat" so to speak on a series of Puts that started the day following the downward momentum of it's previous day's trading. A fifteen minute trade on the opening presented itself. That's what trading Apple options is all about. As the trading continued later that morning the logic of what transpired in this short period of time was quickly forgotten. My point is that it's this first half hour of option trading on every Friday morning which is the climax of option trading for the entire week. My June 4th blog, "Working the Markets on a Friday Morning..." shares this same sentiment. A 10:45 update. Look at how the logic of the first part of this blog gets totally obliterated as the trading day continues.
In only a matter of minutes the bid .89 ask .94 we saw at 10:03 a.m. shrank down to bid .45 ask .48. That's one of the reasons I was happy to get out of my position in this yesterday. Now here is how this option series finished out the day. They closed at .78.
**** A look at Apple one day later on June 28th. It's a new ball game! At the same time the markets are tanking!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Living on Kraft Dinner?

Image
What does the word disconnect mean? As a verb it means "to sever or interrupt the connection of or between; detach". Option trading - one day options - is a disconnect from the world. What happens to slightly "out-of-the-money" Call options on Costco when the stock shoot up thirty dollars on the day? I will show you what happened on Friday to Costco Calls and the options on a few other stocks I frequently watch. What a disconnect from the real world. But before that a look at how the indexes traded. 1) Costco. It's five day chart and a look at how three of it's option series moved upwards in one day. You may not know how to read these printouts but try to read the highs and lows on these option pricings. One printout shows an "at-the-money" option which means you are buying a contract on the stock, good for one day only at a locked in price equal to (or very close to) what the stock is currently trading at. The other two contracts shown are ...
Read more

The Little Engine That Could

Image
Walmart again. It's all I seem to blog about. Here is it's five day chart. The stock keeps going up and the option series are set up in one dollar spreads. Even a fifty cent move on the stock moves the needle on these Calls. Look at how this series of Calls was trading yesterday at 3:00 p.m.. Now here is this same series of Calls just before noon today. Thirty days of upward action like this punctuated by the off day of decline. Now notice the higher volume of trading in the series of Calls with the higher striking price. These are the ones's with more leverage. At the same time look at the five day chart on Costco. The two stocks sometimes trade in tandem. Humpty dumpty sat on a wall .... a had a great fall. Someday soon a fall might happen but what a great ride it has been.
Read more

A Fireside Chat - One Year Options and Thirty Day Options. Which is Better?

Image
Some say to think small, not big. Trying to play Disney options is thinking big. It is a stock slighty out of favor. If we start with it's a three year chart, we will see it is down by about 50% over that period of time. Now it's one year chart. If the stock can break 110 in early 2024 the sky is the limit. It does have a lot of moving parts so anything could happen. Look at these Calls options one year out. One year in options buys a lot of time.They look reasonable. If the stock ever inched up to the $105.00 price level in the three or four months these options would jump up in price by about 50%. Even more if they had really good news. Yet it's the "what-if" aspect of the equation that castes such a trade in doubt. "What if" stories just don't cut it. There are to many variables in play. Then again, why are we even thinking of long-term Call options after a December's rally? Let's switch gears. If consumers are out spending for X-mas...
Read more