Featured

"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 ...
Post a Comment

What To Focus On

Last week the top ten most actively traded stocks on the NYSE, Volume percent Leaders were in order, Beachbody (BODY), ProphyAqn, M3-Bridage, ApolloStrallA,TelecomArgentina, ConstellationA, Xperi, YPF, SilverBoxLLLA and CementoPacasm. All these names were new to me. The top ten on the Nasdaq, once again Volume percent leaders where AuroraTech, MorphoSys, iRobot, FocusImpact, Creud, CleanEatha, .... well you get the point. When you daytrade you should only have a handfull of names you feel comfortable trading. Forget all of the most active hype. Guess how much Ford was up last week? .14 cents on the week. What about Nio, the Chinese EV company so many people are trading? It was up 1 cent on the week. Lucid was down 1 cent and Apple was up .28 cents. With movements this small how can traders make any money? Last week I tracked both Ford and Deere Call options. Deere was off $19.96 on the week and Boeing was up $11.96. Pick names like this and follow their stories. Learn to play the reactions to earning reports. Stay away from the markets on days everything seems to be going sideways. Look for mid-week reversals and check out the upside and downside volumes at 10:30 a.m. on a Friday morning to see if midday rallies could materialize. Wait for hurricane notices and buy Home Depot Calls. If you like playing options that expire in a few days check your calendar to make sure no upcoming suprise holidays will jip you out of one days trading action. Find one year out options on stocks in the ten dollar range. Yes you can teach youself how to play options. Keep reading these blogs.

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