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"Tony The Tiger" - A Food Stock

The mood of Wall Street is now changing as the reality of tariffs is starting to kick in. Two weeks ago not so much so. Kelloggs had "so-so" earnings come out a few weeks ago and the stock exploded upwards. Note the very last line above mentions the effects of tariffs are not taken into consideration. So many stocks with "so-so" earning reports have jumped in price based on the "lets make America great again" slogan. Deere stock is shooting to the moon as I keep writing about in spite of declining sales in the last quarter. The sentiment seems to be that they are immune to tariffs. On paper they might be. Read this. Americans are struggling to buy gas, eggs and insurance. Total housing starts in the U.S.in 2024 were down 3.9%. Walmart, the recent darling stock in the last four weeks for Call option players woke up this morning with an earnings report which was healthy but with came with some caveats. Here is what happened. Perhaps the U.S. is starting ...
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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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