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"Tony The Tiger" - A Food Stock

The mood of Wall Street is now changing as the reality of tariffs is starting to kick in. Two weeks ago not so much so. Kelloggs had "so-so" earnings come out a few weeks ago and the stock exploded upwards. Note the very last line above mentions the effects of tariffs are not taken into consideration. So many stocks with "so-so" earning reports have jumped in price based on the "lets make America great again" slogan. Deere stock is shooting to the moon as I keep writing about in spite of declining sales in the last quarter. The sentiment seems to be that they are immune to tariffs. On paper they might be. Read this. Americans are struggling to buy gas, eggs and insurance. Total housing starts in the U.S.in 2024 were down 3.9%. Walmart, the recent darling stock in the last four weeks for Call option players woke up this morning with an earnings report which was healthy but with came with some caveats. Here is what happened. Perhaps the U.S. is starting ...
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Lowes / Apple

The first trading morning of the week are always difficult to play because the premiums on Call and Put options which expire on Friday are always excessive. In this instance Monday was a holiday so today, Tuesday was the first day of the week. I found myself focused on 'Lowes' because it was dropping in price when everything else I usually follow seemed to be going up. I had played it last week. Here is what I did.
In at 10:53 a.m. at $4.06 and out at 11:53 at $4.63. A one hour trade. Here is it's chart, I caught the rebound.
What was odd about this trade? Well look at how few contracts traded early in the morning.
Only one contract traded in the first ten minutes of trading and at 10:53 a.m. only two contracts had traded. In total there was only thirty five outstanding contracts. What a crazy low number.
Contrast these open interest numbers and daily number of contracts traded to the action on the day in "Apple". The numbers you are about to see are shocking.
63,361 contracts ended up trading on this series of Call options in one day with an open interest at the end of the day of only 4,565 contracts. So many traders are making this series of options as "go to" options looking to capitalize on daily market swings. They are inexpensive, move up and down quickly and offer instant liquidity. Playes sometime purchase them in quantities of one hundred or more at a time. Here is "Apples" one day chart.
I did a feable trade in it and got out and broke even. it's all about catching an interday swing and getting out. Here is how they traded on the day and here is what did. I was lucky to get out and call the trade a wash. It ended up closing lower.
The takeaway on all of this is that traders are now using "Apple" Calls as a trading vehicle in a big way.

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