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Walmart Again

On Monday I did a blog on buying this week's Call options on Walmart for a morning move. Today is now Thursday and there was a big sell off in the markets yesterday. Tesla sold off for example and here is what happened to it. Today it is slightly rebounding as are so many other stocks. Thursdays however as oftened mentioned in recent blogs are not a good time to be purchasing one day options on stocks that expire the next day. Times change. In less chaotic times that's not always case. In the last few years there would be known upcoming Friday morning events like the release farm payroll numbers or other economic readings that would move the needle on the markets going up or down on on a Friday morning. In those markets it paid to get into option positions before the closing on a Thursday to get out on the Friday morning bounces were caused by the release of these premarket reports. So how is any of this revelant to Walmart's trading today? Well, there was a whole bunch o...
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Caterpillar Calls. A Classic Trading Situation.

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 expire this Friday) one minute into the trading session.
Now look where the stock traded down to at 10:00 a.m.
How did the Call options trade on it? Well first notice on the upper printout at 9:31 a.m.. At that time only two option contracts had traded on it. This tells us is that the interest in premarket trading was very low or next to nothing. That's somewhat suprising. In the absence of bad news, no one is really interested in trying to estimate how bad this news could be. Now let us look at how the stock continued to drop, showing the 220 Calls at 9:58 a.m. and then also earlier at 9:31 a.m.. Imagine the stock being down like $4.58 when then D.J.I was up over 300 points. But wait. Stocks do sometimes turn around. Look at the one day chart below on Catipillar showing how it ended up trading on the day and look at how the 217.50 and 220 Call series ended up closing ot the day.
Good money was made by option traders who timed their trading wisely.It wasn't a short term trade. It was four or five hour trade. We also note that Caterpillar continued to jump upwards the following morning.
I call it "A Classic Trading Situation" because Catipillar is known to trade upwards and downwards on no real news. All of this action never ends.

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