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Showing posts from January, 2022

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Apple Options

Apple options can move quickly and they are tough to play. Product launches are highly anticipated, often delayed and widely followed. Short term options on Apple expire three times a week. The stock can move $3.00 or $5.00 or $10:00 in any given day. Do I have any special insights into how to play options on it? Not really, in this case the stock has moved sideways for most of the day after a quick morning drop. Now here is it's five day chart. Now this. So what makes these so difficult to play? It's that so many different factors can make the stock move so luck makes up a big part of what might happen next. A six dollar stock drop on Apple is more likely to experience a reversal in price than a twelve dollar drop. Let's see what happens next. Here is the $307.50 series of Calls in the last minute of Monday trading. Can you see the volume of trading shoot upwards in the last 70 minutes of trade. Let's see what the open interest is going to be going into tomorrow...

Disappointment on The Opening - Caterpillar Earnings Report

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Caterpillar's earnings report. What I see is 4th quarter sales up 23%. Strong 4th quarter earnings of $3.71 per share.That's a solid number. Just think, the supply chain issue isn't being used as a mistake. Now look at the the opening options market. The stock is down on the news. Management made a few remarks about near term headwinds. They do that sometimes to temper growth expectations. These two quotes are the 205 Call series which expire today. One is at 9:44 a.m. and one is at 10:03 a.m.. They would be very dangerous to consider purchasing since its very unlikely that they could ever shake off this downward spike so early in the morning. So now what? It's at this time in the morning when the decision to reacte to this bad news gets tricky. The stock is down like ten dollars and the DJI is having a good day. There is a strong tempation to jump in on the upside hoping for a quick reversal. That's one of the things that makes option trading so difficult. One...