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Trying to Outguess The Markets

A few years back the markets crashed when Russia invaded Ukraine. The front pages of newspapers around the world at that time showed people trying to escape cities which were heavily shelled. Our heart's sank. How could such atrocities be happening? Why were schools and hospitals targeted? War is evil. Guess what? With Trump acting as a new dictator the world once again has gone awry. It's scary that one old man with so much power can abuse the system. What does all of this mean for option traders? It means time to sit on the sidelines. Yes you can jump in playing rebounds and catch some nice short term directional moves. You are basically trading against computers. Why not just sit it out and chill? Everything is amuck. Why be trying to make hero trades? Ironically enough some traders are being drawn into this action. Look at this chart. While its difficult to see because of a "pop-up" on the screen "Netflix rebounded over ten dollars a share after reboundin...
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Snowflake Call Options

Snowflake is a company valued at 1.22 billion. It's a California based company, a cloud data provider. A Silicon Valley high tech story. What I know is that "Barron's" recently did an extensive article on this company and I know the stock trades in an erratic manner. Here is it's chart this morning just after an earnings report release.
So what you might say. I understand. It's a situation outside the realm of most option traders. They are expensive options to purchase. Look for example at this readout from exactly one month ago. It shows the stock down on the day to $131.55 and the 131.00 Call options series on them which had three weeks to go before expiring. Many option traders are not willing to pay the premiums incurred with buying that much time. Notice the then current price of $740.00 per contract. Who wants to pay that much for just one contract? Not very many traders. In hindsight, these options ended up tripling in price!
All of this brings us to a look at the Call options on Snowflake on Monday and Tuesday this week knowing an earning report was coming out this morning. Look at these two screen shots. The first screen shots show a five day chart on Monday. It's not pretty.
Now here is a screen shot of the 150 Calls at two different times during the day.
Not many contracts are being traded. If we look at a slightly higher striking price, the 155 Calls we will notice its the same thing.
Think about what your getting for your money? In the case of the 155 series of Calls the stock would have to go up eleven dollars by the end of the week just to break even! Now what? Let's look at the Snowflake chart yesterday, one day prior to the earnings report. A once ugly chart now showing some signs of a comeback.
Here now is the earning report news.They knocked things out of the park.
Here are the 150 Calls after this one day surge.
$45.00 up from around $10.00 two days ago. This type of trading is not for the faint of heart. Snowflake is not a stock I understand well enough to play options on.

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