CAT Puts

Early indications were that the markets were set to rally on Tuesday March 29th. Most of the stocks that is except for Caterpillar. I scurried around looking for news as to why Caterpillar was trading lower in the premarkets but couldn't find anything. Caterpillar, in spite of it's size often seems to trade in a bubble. It's movements up and down seem so random. Institutional shareholders move huge blocks of stock in very selective ways. Within only a few minutes of trading the markets were up strongly but Caterpillar was going in the opposite direction. When you look at it's opening chart below one would have to ask themselves if there would be any support at the $219.00 dollar price level. It's the falling knife syndrome. If you're looking for a reversal when do you buy in? With the markets so strong one would think it's only a matter of time before the stock stops falling. Well look at the volume of trading on the 220 Caterpillar Call series (that expi...

If you have winnings from a previous trade sometimes you value that money differently. It's difficult to explain why but there are scholars out there who have written books on this very topic. It's like play money or free money that you can now use to make the wildest option trades you can think of. It's money you feel you can risk. It's like being a kid in a candy store with money in your pocket. Everything looks good.There are two stocks that I sometimes follow, Dominos Pizza and John Deere. Both have options available to trade on them however the Call and Put options on the first one, Dominos are near impossible to trade. Why? Well on a Friday morning with options expiring that day on it, how do you predict which direction the stock on the world's largest pizza company is going to go? The answer is you can't. The company is painfully aware that one news release about the price of cheese going up or problems with their ordering apps could send their stock int...

What an opening chart! Here also is a different chart showing how Ford closed the day yesterday. It's the very same chart minus this morning's spike. It's amazing how a Presidential speech the night before can help to move the markets in certain stocks in this price range. Now lets look at how this affected the 17 series of Calls. What do you see in the above printout? At 2:17 p.m. yesterday before the speech the Ford 17 Calls were trading at .24 cents or twenty four dollars a contract. I was watching them. Now look at what they are trading at this morning, the morning after the Biden speech and look at what where they were traded at the end of the day.