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A Random Walk In The Park On A Monday Morning. A Caution. Monday Mornings Are Often Not An Option Players Best Friend

Let's start with this. It's now 10:26 a.m. A bet on Caterpillar rebounding by the end of the week. There are no takers. Why have to watch the screen for the next four days in agony waiting for a rebound which if happens is just a "break even trade"? But Wait. I made a mistake. The market is actually now down 668 points. What else can we look at? Interactive Brokers. These kind of stocks always do poorly on days with the threat of margin calls. Yet there is something interesting about the printout I am about to show. It is that these options are "one-month-out" Calls. These longer term options trade differently than short term options. (these options trade in one month intervals). If the stock we are following stops it's freefall the value of the options will nudge up ten, fifteen or twenty percent. A seven dollar option Call might creep back up to $8.00 or $9.00 at which time it could be sold. In contrast with a five day option a slight reversal in ...
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I Wonder How The Back Office Is Going To Handle My Complaint

The blog is about dealing with the back office of the brokerage company I trade with. This story happened today. Todays trading session has closed and I just made a telephone call to them just after the market closed to voice a complaint over how I feel I got short changed. Here are my background notes. 1) It involves trading the 370 Boeing Puts that expire at the end of this week. I bought in at 10:08:34 a.m. and sold out at 2:59:38 p.m. I was stuck in this position longer than I had hoped. I got lucky and did O.K., however that is not the point. 2) Here are my two "in-and-out" tickets. Two contracts in at 10:08 a.m. at $163.00 each and two contracts out then "at-market" for $365.00 each at 2:59.38 p.m.
Now here is Boeing's one day chart. It dropped precipitously from 2:59:00 p.m.to 3:00:p.m. I just happened to be watching it at the exact time of the crash.
That's when news came out that the "FAA opens Now a Boeing Inquiry over 787 inspections". What wonderful news for me! 3) So my fill once again was for $365.00 on each of my two contracts at 2:59.38 p.m. 4) How do you check to see what the options were trading at at the exact time of my sell "at-market" order? Off I went to Yahoo Finance and this is what I was able to discover.
It looks like at 2:59 p.m. they were trading for $450.00 and when I was looking at the screen seconds before I placed the order the bid was for more than that but I can't prove it. Bid $475.00 and ask $550.00 stands out in my mind. What I do know is the following. My fill as shown on the ticket was closer to 3:00 p.m. than it was to 2:59:00 p.m..
The readout at 3:00:00 p.m., courtesy once again of Yahoo Finance. It shows these options trading at $670.00. 4) The fellow I spoke said they would do an inquiry and get back to me within 1-3 working days. I hate to say it but I am not very hopeful. ** The expected call in from the brokerage office on the following morning. They said, they have checked around and the two trades prior to mine where at $239.00 and $280.00. They checked a Bloomberg tape and something else. I asked for ten free trades. They said no. Sometimes in life you just have to let things slide. Welcome to swimming in a sea of sharks.

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