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Trying to Outguess The Markets

A few years back the markets crashed when Russia invaded Ukraine. The front pages of newspapers around the world at that time showed people trying to escape cities which were heavily shelled. Our heart's sank. How could such atrocities be happening? Why were schools and hospitals targeted? War is evil. Guess what? With Trump acting as a new dictator the world once again has gone awry. It's scary that one old man with so much power can abuse the system. What does all of this mean for option traders? It means time to sit on the sidelines. Yes you can jump in playing rebounds and catch some nice short term directional moves. You are basically trading against computers. Why not just sit it out and chill? Everything is amuck. Why be trying to make hero trades? Ironically enough some traders are being drawn into this action. Look at this chart. While its difficult to see because of a "pop-up" on the screen "Netflix rebounded over ten dollars a share after reboundin...
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One Week Options. Are They A Good Bet In Times like This?

Look at how these these four stocks traded last week. 1)
What a great week for one week Call option players on Boeing even though the stock ended up down .83 cents on the week. 2) Roku. Roku hasn't yet recovered from a not so good quarterly report. Roku lost $1.13 on the week. (Netflix in somewhat the same space was up $35.780.)
3) Disney suprised. I talked about that in a recent blog.
4) Now Caterpillar. It was up $12.83
Now The D.J.I. was down .11% or basically flat. In good times Call options can be your best friend. To be continued. Now let us look at the next week's action. Let's begin with Boeing. Here is it's Monday March 4th one day chart.
Look at the buying opportunity which presented itself around 10:00 a.m. Next Roku. Look a how it traded on the day. Can you see how buying in on the opening would have been a mistake? That is a common theme with one week Calls on a Monday morning. Buying into it during the late morning was better.
Now Disney. First it's one day movement.
Note the strong open interest numbers.
Now Caterpillar. Last week it had a strong run up in price so it would seem to be more vulerable to a breather on the opening today.
All this happend on a day when the markets were down.
To be continued. Now a Wedneday after the closing bell update on March 6th. Everything is down.
Two days of going sideways like this is unheard of. Now Roku
It's 30 day chart tells us not to expect to much in the next couple of days.
Now Disney. It suprised last week on unexpected news. Not so much this week.
When the open interest in a series of Calls like this starts to creep up you know the option makers want to see the stock flounder for a few more days. Now Caterpillar. It's down. It still looks like it has some upside.
A March 9th weekend update. Boeing 198.49, Roku 64.50, Disney 110.32 and Caterpillar 339.19. The D.J.I. fell .9%. It was the second weeek that this index went sideways. Let's check in on these four stocks at the end of next week.

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