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Caterpillar - Catching A Reversal On A Tuesday

Tuesdays are not the best of days to look for reversals however Caterpillar jumped a modest amount which impacted the value of this series of Puts. This is a 1:36 p.m. readout. Here is it's five day chart. Now its one day chart. It would seem like kind of a random thing to do and why fight a strong stock? One reason is that the markets are only mildly up and could give back some of it's gains before the end of the day. Caterpillar could be gaining strenght based on last weeks articles talking about how Caterpillar could potential gain from this new AI movement. Notice that the five day chart is in an uptrend and notice the small open interest numbers in the Puts. No one wants to hold Puts on Caterpillar when it is in this uptrend. Could it has a soft selloff in the next two hours? Here it is now 50 minutes later. The "bid and ask" are almost unchanged. There is also not much change in the DJIA index.Now this. The DJIA is sellig off and Caterpillar is hanging ...
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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!

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