Featured

The Appetite For Caterpillar Options Going Into An Earning's Report Is Quite Small .

Let's start with this. Caterpillar has an earnings report coming out on April 30th. You should listen to it. It's not going to be difficult to find. Now look at these how these two series of options closed out the week. The Calls are just "in-the-money" and the Puts are just slightly "out-of-the-money".The cost to play the upside with one week options almost equals what it costs to play the downside. That's kind of strange as usually the Calls cost more to purchase than the Puts. Both are super expensive however Caterpillar as of late can jump $15.00 or $20.00 dollars in one day. When I say super expensive what do I mean? 2,690 means $2,690 Americian per contract. That is not chump change. You would have to have a very strong conviction it was going to move one way or another before you would want to jump in. Yet there is bigger problem. The current price of the stock is in a nose bleeding territory. Look at it's one year chart. Is it really doing ...
Post a Comment

Ford Calls On A Friday Morning After A Best Weekly Rally Year To Date

First the year to date chart followed by it's one week chart.
It's Friday morning in the premarkets and which way are the 13.50 series of Calls going to trade on the day? Let's look at how the option traders have set themselves up going into the opening markets. First, let's look at the price on yesterdays closing of the 13.5 Puts and the number of open contracts.
There are 32,193 13.50 Puts outstanding and they cost seven dollars a contract. Ford closed Friday at 13.58 which is eight cents higher that the 13.5 striking price. To break even on these Puts the stock has to close at 13.43. If it closes lower than that your profits start to kick in. The stock is up one dollar in the last few days and it sputtered around yesterday and didn't do anything so it is conceivable it might give up some of it's recent gain. But wait. Imagine the stock opening ten cents lower, let's say it opens at 13.48 on a nervous opening. If that were to happen the Puts would open lower also, probably at around eleven cents. Bingo. If your holding 200 or 300 contracts and if you live in the U.S. and can trade commission free you can jump out on the opening "at market" and go golfing for the rest of the day. The liquidity in the options is excellent and there no monkeying around in giving you a clean fill. Let's now consider what might happen to the 13.50 Calls. Here is how they are set up going into the Friday morning opening bell.
They cost more, seventeen cents to be exact. That's because Ford closed the previous dat at 13.58 so they are already "in-the-money" by eight cents. To break even on the day if you were holding these Calls you bought on the close yesterday at seventeen cents the stock would have to close at 13.63. Might that happen? Note that their are 12,062 of these contracts outstanding which is less than half the number of outstanding Puts. But wait, the Puts only cost about half the price so really the hedging is perfectly balanced. So here we are. It's 8:50 a.m. as I write this. I am drinking my morning coffee. I get it from a company called "Sprockets" in Australia. Let's see if the bulls or bears win. This type of action happens all the time but is extremely revelant on weeks like this when a stock is in an upward surging pattern. Now for a spoiler alert. Fifteen minutes ago when I started writing this blog here is how Ford was trading in the premarkets.
Can you see the "bid" and "ask" is up. It looks like the Call holders at this point in time are the winners. If you put in a ticket now to sell in the premarkets "at market" you will get a decent fill without the need to watch the opening markets. You would have won. Now a 9:46 a.m. update. Look at the Calls
More than a double and the Puts got beat up.
It is interesting stuff but only the tip of the iceburg in what happens in option trading. * See my previous blog on how Ford traded a few days earlier.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting For A Drop On The Opening On Bad News - Eli Lilly

Image
Here is the bad news. The company is Eli Lilly. How bad is this news? Well look at it trading in the premarkets. So what do I think? I think the news is a setback of sorts, but not really all that bad. The stock is going to open lower, that's a given. It's like trying to play Boeing after an announcement that an airplane has crashed. So the stock is going to crash and it might have a small rebound and then it's going to slide down some more. A test of sorts will happen sometime in the afternoon. It might stock falling but then where will it go from there? The best case scenario is a recognition that investors got it all wrong and the stock ends up flat on the day. Yet there might be more of a downward dumping of the stock on the close followed by a selloff on tomorrows opening. Should option players be jumping in to play the upside on next week's Calls? That is the question. Here is a look at Boeing on the days after a crash. Day two after the crash was equally as ...
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 slightly 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-ma...
Read more

News on Polestar , Lucid (Trading After A Reverse Stock Split) Plus Ford News And Vinfast

Image
Look at the one year chart on Polester. Now it's one month chart. What's going on? It's confusing. It was down $.36 cents on the week. If you want you can spend $.20 or $.25 on Puts and hope that the company goes under in the next five or six months. They recently raised more money by releasing more shares so it's running out of options. You can't run at a loss forever and this news will most likely scare off potential new car buyers. This actually is a low number of outstanding Put options. The consensus seems to be that it is not game over yet. Lucid started trading this week on a "one-for-ten" reverse stock split. Here is its one week chart. It was down $1.39 on the week. It's also going to struggle. Both of these stocks have challenges ahead. On a more positive note here is a chart that looks kind of perky. Ford on the week. The stock was down $.03 cents on the week and it was the 3th highest in share volume trading on the NYSE. It appears...
Read more