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

Some option traders on Friday mornings just want to be in and out in the first hour or so of trading on short term options they feel comfortable trading. In the second half of the day most of the action calms down. Take your winnings and run. McDonalds sold off a little bit yesterday afternoon and firmed up a bit towards the closing. Could this "mostly downtrend" continue? Here is a partial look at the opening bell's action, today 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. Now this, McDonald's jumps up $4.98 and the 317.50 Puts we followed yesterday which are now "out-of-the-money" acted accordingly. 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 started to come off a touch. These Call options where not attacting all that much attention. The bid and ask jumped up ...
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Caterpillar Calls. Our last Blog Was About Caterpillars Calls A Week Ago Last Friday. Here We Are Now Talking About The Same Thing.

The open interest numbers in Caterpillar Calls last week was negligible. Here is a look at the Caterpillar 237.5O Calls at 12:14 P.M. a week ago Friday. Look at the open interest number. It's next to nothing.
Now here is a look at one series of Caterpillar calls, this time the 250 Calls at 11:53 A.M. last Friday Nov 17th. They were up over 300% in that morning's trading action and the stock was up $16.00 in one week! What I find so strange is that so few traders were using Call options to catch this strong directional move. The surge in the stocks price was afterall one of the largest "one week" surges this year. All of the short term, mid term and long term Call options exploded upwards in price. Here is a look at the Caterpillar 250 Calls at 11:23 a.m. which where to expire that same day. Yes the open interest numbers were up a touch however they were still next to nothing.
Here now is a five day look at it's trading.
Now a 30 day look at this stock.
So why once again are so few option traders playing them? Why not just focus on this one stock? It baffles me. Things to ponder. 1) In 2022 Caterpillar had 109,100 employees. Why wouldn't at least 200 or 500 hundred of them watch the option market on their companies stock and jump in and use Calls and Puts as trading vehicles at times like this when the stock is hot? 2) Rebuilding the damages caused by wars and global warming. Caterpillar has to be there. Goverments will find the money needed to rebuild all that is destroyed. 3) The short position in Caterpillar. It's somewhere around 1.3% of the float or the short interest ratio / days to cover is 2.5 days. That's nothing. When this stock decides to move up for whatever reason there is nothing really to hold it back. Boeing jumped a chunk today on an analyst upgrade. Analysts are more prone to do that in good markets. If Caterpillar could jump 15 of 20 dollars why can't Boeing? That's logical thinking.
$270 from $204. Announcements of $220 from $204 are more the norm. Deere is yet another stock to watch for price swings. Options that expire in 30 days seem to be best to play in markets like this.

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