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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 - It's First Quarter Earnings Report

Boeing rallied yesterday on the release of it's earnings report only then to tank. Caterpillar is tanking this morning in the premarkets. Let's begin with it's 5 day and 30 day chart.
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The world needs to be rebuilt and Caterpillar is there to help. It's growing, it's got a good reputation, it's not laying off employees and it's doing just fine. If it misses a beat on it's earnings report so what? Life goes on. Then there are those pesky analyst who are known to offer a convoluted spin on things. If you like Caterpillar just buy it on the dips and put it away. So the markets will be opening on the commentary by the companies C.E.O of "sales about flat". Phrasing it that way is a recipe for short term disaster.
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The two printouts above show some of the early morning action in one Put series and in One Call series. What happened the next day? A slight rebound with next to no traders trying to capitalize on a rebound. What does this tell us? It tells us option traders in general stay away from trading the "release of earning reports" on Caterpillar.
Now the one week out Call options.
Low open interest, a low volume of trading and relatively big pricings considering the these are only slightly "in-the-money" Calls which might take a few seeks to gain value. The bottom line is that this stock really got beat up and going forward it's going to be again upward journey. It helps that they are buying back their own shares. ** Now a look at how Caterpillar traded at the close on Monday April 29th.
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The volume of Calls traded is very light. That's suprising.

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