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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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The Trade of the Year

It's not that complicated however it kind of slipped under the radar. It was a big name company we all know called Lowes. The payoff was wild. What are we looking at? Options that closed on Thursday at ten cents a contract and opened at one cent the folling morning, a Friday which then then hit an interday high of one dollar and fifty cents. A one thousand dollar investment would have went as high as $150,000.00. Folks, all of this is legal and anyone can play it. You could have made it all by lunchtime.
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What happened? Well we are talking about the 200 series on Calls that expired yesterday on Friday July 23th. At the start of the trding session they were over $3.00 "out-of-the money. Very few traders saw value in them. Yet Lowes did close strong on Thursday the day before it. Then it wobbled a touch on the Friday opening and resumed it's upward charge. The price of lumber is dropping and many people are waiting to purchase lumber at these new lowering prices. The kicker is that four dollar moves on stocks in the two hundred dollar price range in one day happen more often than you think. This was the trade of the year! **Buying options on a stock two dollars out-of-the-money on the last day of the life of a series of Calls or Puts is difficult to . I looked the Lowes 200 Put series at 1:53 p.m. and wondered if going in the opposite way offered an opportunity but opted not to play it. Here is what I saw. They ended up expiring worthless.
In my opinion, Friday morning Call options which expire that day (meaning in the ten minutes or so of trading) sometimes offer interesting trading opportunities as you are catching the fresh winds of morning exuberance.

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