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Suicide Options

Do you want to split hairs, meaning do you want to chase the most miniscule of moves in a stock's price? With the way options are structured on Pfizer you can. Look at this five day chart on Pfizer and look at this particular Call option series. These are the 24 series of Calls that expire this Friday. Why do I think these Calls offer good value? Two reasons, the first being that this stock trades on high volumes. As as of 3:50 p.m. today the stock has traded in excess of 39.6 million shares. I take comfort in this number. With this much volume I would think that the option makers would have less power and less desire to control any short term directional moves that this stock has. The second reason I like these options is that they trade in one dollar increments. I like that. In my blogs about Walmart I mention the same thing. In this case we now have a "Bid" of .22 and an "Ask" .25 with a high on the day of .42. Purchase these options in quanties of 20, 30, ...
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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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