Featured

Two Hour Options On A Friday Afternoon With The DJIA Down Over Three Hundred Points

A stupid move? Right? Maybe. The thought of buying options that expire in two hours. Let me try to explain something that might be missing in your thinkings. Here is a list of five strong stocks that everyone knows about from watching the markets of 2024. Apple, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Nvidia. If a retracement of a morning selloff is ever going to happen on a Friday afternoon odds are you should be watching these ones if you are a short term option player. Last Friday, as mentioned in my previous blog the DJIA was down 333 points. Here now is a one day chart of Meta on that day which was Friday December 27th. Hone in now (hone is a word seldom used) on the 12:30 p.m. time period which is 2.5 hours prior to when Friday's options will expire for retail traders. One week out options are also interesting options to consider at this same time period because they would also benefit from an after rebound or the firming of the markets after a morning drop. T...
Post a Comment

"Caterpillar on Monday Mornings"

This blog may seem to be lacking in content. It is only to say that one should not purchase "last week" - "Call" options on Monday mornings.
Typically Monday morning aren't good entry points and case in point is what happened to "Caterpillar" yesterday, a Monday as it dropped over four dollars a share. One of "Caterpillars" characteristics, which in some ways is a good thing and in some ways not so good is that it often moves upwards or downwards in price on "no news". Yesterday was on of those days. The difficult part is, if you trade the options on this stock on a regular basis like I do you sometimes have the urge to want to jump in a play the upside whenever you see it sell off in price. This itch to "get back in" is most prevalent at the end of the first thirty minutes of trading on a Monday morning. This time "Caterpillar" seemed to be taking a hit and if you were able to buy in and catch a reversal you would be a hero and in doing so you would be able jumpstart your week of trading? I got sucked in yesterday. I bought in as "Caterpillar" continued to tank all day. How do you learn avoid this trap? There is one obvious way. Remember I have talked about having individual screens set up on your computer of sectors of stocks that you are watching like retail, automotive, spacs, pharmaceuticals or whatever you happen to have an interest in. In this case "Caterpillar" was the only stock on my list of "big movers" that was down. That in itself should have told me to stay away from the "Calls". Here is a look at the "Caterpillar" 245 "Calls" on the Monday morning selloff.
Shown above is an 11:30 a.m. chart. Now that it's down over four dollars in one day can we expect a rebound? As the hours dragged on in the afternoon the stock stayed pretty flat. Nobody knew why this happened. Now it is Tuesday. Would this be a good time to catch a rebound, this being day two in the week? Look at yet another drop on the opening? Yes, it could be a good time however at such a moment when your buying into options on a falling stock it's sometimes best to pick with an option with an extra week of "time value" built into them. Here now is what I did.
This series of "Call" options at this particular time look attractive.
The above quotes show the "240" series that expire this week while my fill is on a next week out 240 "Call" option position.
This next chart shows a rebound kicking in.
. I used this rebound to get out and all of this happened in just over an hour.
Did I sell out too early? Not really, here is how it ended up closing out the day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Trump Media Technology Options With Three Days To Go.

Image
On Tuesday just after 3:00 p.m the Trump Media Technology Options had stop traded again. What is the next 24 hours going to bring? Who knows. So many option traders follow this stock and most are afraid to buy either Call or Put Options on it because their premiums are so expensive. If Trumph wins the stock should soar and if he loses the stock will tank. The option premiums are priced expensively in both directions. Here now is how both the Calls and Puts traded on the opening today. First the Calls six minutes into the opening. Now the Puts. Now a look at how these options played the day. With a "stop trading" situation the option session ended a little bit early as evidenced in these following readings. Notice also how low the open interest number is in these Puts. Option traders for the most part opted to stay away from this situation. Now this. Trump wins. Here is how the 38 series of Calls traded just after the opening at 10:11 a.m.. The stock is up however the...
Read more

Another Earnings Report - "Roku" - Thursdays and Friday Trading.

Image
Please read this Roku "earnings report" blog. Roku was down fifteen dollars in the first hour of trading today after the release of it's third quarter earnings report. Here is a 10:52 a.m. look at one series of Puts that doubled in price on the opening as a result of this sell off. In my last blog on Caterpillar I talked about points of inflection where stocks rebound after bad news. This time an inflection point may not be in the cards. Caterpillars earning were just shy of expections but nothing had really changed. The world still needs their products and they are still a dominant player in their industry. Roku is a different animal. Their subscribers are a fickle bunch. Companies like Roku and Netflix go up and down all the time. Roku now is just back to a level at which it was trading at earlier this year. I don't know how to interpret their financial statements. Things still look pretty good for them to me. Once again here is a look at the increase in the value...
Read more