Featured

A Random Walk In The Park On A Monday Morning. A Caution. Monday Mornings Are Often Not An Option Players Best Friend

Let's start with this. It's now 10:26 a.m. A bet on Caterpillar rebounding by the end of the week. There are no takers. Why have to watch the screen for the next four days in agony waiting for a rebound which if happens is just a "break even trade"? But Wait. I made a mistake. The market is actually now down 668 points. What else can we look at? Interactive Brokers. These kind of stocks always do poorly on days with the threat of margin calls. Yet there is something interesting about the printout I am about to show. It is that these options are "one-month-out" Calls. These longer term options trade differently than short term options. (these options trade in one month intervals). If the stock we are following stops it's freefall the value of the options will nudge up ten, fifteen or twenty percent. A seven dollar option Call might creep back up to $8.00 or $9.00 at which time it could be sold. In contrast with a five day option a slight reversal in ...
Post a Comment

Cat Puts, No Cat Calls

In a past blog Caterpillar averted a strike and it was noted that the stock jumped to the moon on that news. Caterpillar has a large following and likes good news-made in America stories. Biden avoided his government running out of money late Thursday and on Friday the stock Caterpillar jumped to the moon. It opened higher and kept going up.There is no looking back now at what happened.
My May 29th blog talked about how Caterpillar had slight bounce last Friday morning and the light volume of option trading on it. With the stock going sideways to down all that week playing Call options on it was out of fashion. Things changed on Friday June 2nd. Caterpillar bounced. So here now is a look at how two "out-of-the-money" series of Call options traded on it on Friday.
Look at the open interest numbers going into Friday. Two hundred and ninety one contracts. Nobody saw this jump coming which is so strange. Once again they were very light. Few traders were expecting the news to come when it did. This blog could now go in many directions. Last week both Caterpillar and Boeing struggled on the week and option trading volumes dried up. My attitude was not to trade, to wait for better days. I should have known better, the system is a little bit corrupt. Insiders could gain the most from a late Thursday release of good news. A one day pop in the next days options. That is what happened. On Friday the D.J.I. was up over 700 points. The one day options on Caterpillar were star performers. It was the trade-of-the-year on Caterpillar Calls. It doesn't look like any of the 100,000 or whatever the number of brokers and analysis there are out were clued into this action. So strange. * Also think about this. Caterpillar has something like 109,100 employees. They should learn to be part of this action.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Living on Kraft Dinner?

Image
What does the word disconnect mean? As a verb it means "to sever or interrupt the connection of or between; detach". Option trading - one day options - is a disconnect from the world. What happens to slightly "out-of-the-money" Call options on Costco when the stock shoot up thirty dollars on the day? I will show you what happened on Friday to Costco Calls and the options on a few other stocks I frequently watch. What a disconnect from the real world. But before that a look at how the indexes traded. 1) Costco. It's five day chart and a look at how three of it's option series moved upwards in one day. You may not know how to read these printouts but try to read the highs and lows on these option pricings. One printout shows an "at-the-money" option which means you are buying a contract on the stock, good for one day only at a locked in price equal to (or very close to) what the stock is currently trading at. The other two contracts shown are ...
Read more

The Little Engine That Could

Image
Walmart again. It's all I seem to blog about. Here is it's five day chart. The stock keeps going up and the option series are set up in one dollar spreads. Even a fifty cent move on the stock moves the needle on these Calls. Look at how this series of Calls was trading yesterday at 3:00 p.m.. Now here is this same series of Calls just before noon today. Thirty days of upward action like this punctuated by the off day of decline. Now notice the higher volume of trading in the series of Calls with the higher striking price. These are the ones's with more leverage. At the same time look at the five day chart on Costco. The two stocks sometimes trade in tandem. Humpty dumpty sat on a wall .... a had a great fall. Someday soon a fall might happen but what a great ride it has been.
Read more

A Fireside Chat - One Year Options and Thirty Day Options. Which is Better?

Image
Some say to think small, not big. Trying to play Disney options is thinking big. It is a stock slighty out of favor. If we start with it's a three year chart, we will see it is down by about 50% over that period of time. Now it's one year chart. If the stock can break 110 in early 2024 the sky is the limit. It does have a lot of moving parts so anything could happen. Look at these Calls options one year out. One year in options buys a lot of time.They look reasonable. If the stock ever inched up to the $105.00 price level in the three or four months these options would jump up in price by about 50%. Even more if they had really good news. Yet it's the "what-if" aspect of the equation that castes such a trade in doubt. "What if" stories just don't cut it. There are to many variables in play. Then again, why are we even thinking of long-term Call options after a December's rally? Let's switch gears. If consumers are out spending for X-mas...
Read more