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A Random Walk In The Park On A Monday Morning. A Caution. Monday Mornings Are Often Not An Option Players Best Friend

Let's start with this. It's now 10:26 a.m. A bet on Caterpillar rebounding by the end of the week. There are no takers. Why have to watch the screen for the next four days in agony waiting for a rebound which if happens is just a "break even trade"? But Wait. I made a mistake. The market is actually now down 668 points. What else can we look at? Interactive Brokers. These kind of stocks always do poorly on days with the threat of margin calls. Yet there is something interesting about the printout I am about to show. It is that these options are "one-month-out" Calls. These longer term options trade differently than short term options. (these options trade in one month intervals). If the stock we are following stops it's freefall the value of the options will nudge up ten, fifteen or twenty percent. A seven dollar option Call might creep back up to $8.00 or $9.00 at which time it could be sold. In contrast with a five day option a slight reversal in ...
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How The Big Option Traders Made Money This Morning

In most of my blogs I poke around talking about speculating in options on five and ten stocks and sometimes talk about the action in Boeing or Caterpillar. It's all kind of introductory stuff. This blog is different, it's about Amazon, a stock that trades in the $3,500 price range per share. To rich for your blood you might say? I agree but that is where the action is for many of the sophicated option traders. It's big money chasing big rewards. Yet the basic premise of how things work remain the same. This week there are weekly jobless claims reports and the Institute for Supply Management readings on manufacturing activity for the prior month, amongst other reports. The first few days of any month are always busy days of economic reports.
Amazon sometimes exhibits the jitters and it can sometimes be blind sided by bad news. Bad news can send the stock down seventy five dollars in one day. Here is it's trading action yesterday. It gained $8.00 on the day but it was down $25.00 in the last two hours of trading. That's the jitters I am talking about, sellors getting out before the release of job loss/ gain numbers.
So hear we have a stock closing on a Wednesday at $3,479 per share. Would you have the guts to buy in just prior to Wednesday's close a Call option with a striking price of 3,500 which is $21.00 dollars "out-of-the-money" that expires in two trading days? Here is the series of option contracts I am talking about and here is where they closed. They closed at $11.20 a contract with over 31,000 Call option contracts trading on that series in one day! Then in the next the next printout I will show you what price they traded up to on the Thursday morning opening market. Look at how these options jumped up in price.
$11.20 to $19.55 just after the opening at 9:34 a.m. Amazon jumped up $22.00 on the opening. Some option traders trade in a different league.

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