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McDonalds Again And A Follow Up To Yesterday's Blog..

Option traders on Friday mornings just want to be in and out in the first hour or so of trading on short term options. In the second half of the day most of the action calms down. McDonalds sold off a little bit yesterday afternoon and firmed up a bit towards the closing. Could this "mostly downward trend" continue? Here is a partial look at some of the opening bell's activity. Today is a Friday however let us first look at how the stock traded yesterday. Now a look at it's trading pattern at 9:32.22 a.m. The McDonald stock jumped up $4.98 and the 317.50 Puts we followed all day yesterday which are now "out-of-the-money" acted accordingly. They shrunk in value. During the fist 2.22 minutes of trading they traded down to 34 dollars a contract. Now this. In the first three minutes of trading the stock jumped a bit and then started to come off a touch. These Call options where not attacting all that much attention. The bid and ask jumped up on no volume. ...
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A Nervous Week Of Trading

Issues with the debt ceiling was a cloud on the markets all last week except for a Friday morning bounce. First, here is Caterpillar on the week and I want to point out a couple of things. First the light trading in Caterpillar Calls going into Friday. Here is Fridays trading on the 210 series of Calls.
Here now is the five day chart leading up to this. Note also that we were going into a three day weekend.
Only 396 option contracts traded on this series on Friday and the open interest number was quiet light. Am I afraid to trade in option series with reduced volumes like this? No, however on Fridays some series of options on stocks like Telsa can have 300,000 contracts trade in one day on one series! Look at how Caterpillar was trading in the $214 price range at the start of the week. Short term Call option players all got blown away. That's one of the reasons the volume was low in the lower 210 series of Calls. Back on Monday and Tuesday they were well "in-the-money" and to expensive to purchase. My final note on this is that the Friday morning bounce was aided by a strong rebounding market on the day. The morning bounce in Caterpillar was short lived. Then there was Boeing to watch going into Friday morning. What a dangerous thing to be playing on a one day horizon. It also had a bounce on the opening. After two or three days of srubbing the mood of the market was pretty grim. Debt ceiling issues had scared off many traders like me. Why not learn to catch the actions easier markets? Being in the option market during tumultuous times like this can be a draining experience.
Here is how it's options traded on the day.
Finally Ford which popped. Stocks like Ford and Nio in the lower price ranges sometimes bounce boldly. The trick is in knowing when to play them. I have the domain name Fordputs locked up but I really don't have the energy to open up that can of worms. About ten times a year the Friday Calls on Ford which expire that day bounce like this.
The problem I have with trying to play Ford Calls is that the stock Ford can get pulled under the carpet for so many different reasons. Their managemnet seems to abandon new projects on a regular basis and handles unexpected news poorly. Bronos that leak, plants that go idle for shortages of parts, consistent bad news on what is happening with their operations in India. It seems that the analyst who follow the stock can have a field day on good news or bad news stories whenever they want. Henry Ford one hundred years ago also was plagued with the same issues. Did I follow Netfix, Dollar Tree, Nvidia, Snowflake and Super Micro Computer on the week? Not really. Sometimes I think it's best just to play the stories you think you know.

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