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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 ...
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The QQQ's Again

Back on July 26th I wrote a blog on trading the QQQ's. There is nothing magical about trading them, you just type in QQQ and follow the promps like any other stock. It's options on a basket of stocks. Stocks like Apple and the like. Pick whatever the day you want your series to expire. I like buying a few days time. Sometimes the markets lose their strength around noon on Fridays. It happened today. Here is it's five day chart and you can see the market selling off on Friday afternoon.
So here is the trade I made today.
I was in this position for 2.50 hours. You can see I bought an Aug 8th series so that would have given me until Tuesday. I got in at 11:53 a.m. It was an easy chart to play on the downside. Now I want to point out how this is a trading vehicle many traders recognize. Look at the closing summary of this series of Puts. There is something about it which stands out.
Notice the open interest of 1,771 and the trading volume on the day of 31,765. These are hot potatoes and taking a profit on a Friday afternoon is always a logical thing to do.

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