Featured

McDonald's. It's Difficult To Fight Strong Stocks.

Here is McDonalds five day chart at the close on Wednesday. Now here is it's three month chart. Now consider this. In two days the stock is up about twelve dollars. I often talk about Wednesdays being the one day in the week the markets can do reverals. Today the DJIA was up over four hundred points and McDonalds was down 60 cents. It dipped on the opening and came back a bit and then selling pressure came into the stock again on the closing. I personally hate McDonald's food. The internet has tens of Youtube videos saying their fries are poisonous. Yet I get it. But think about this. Whenever a new residential subdivision goes in anywhere in North America there is room for another one of their restaurants to go in. They just pop up and everyone knows what they are. Here now is a snippet I posted in a past McDonald's blog. After a lackluster trading session today McDonald's could drop in the next two days or at least on a Thursday afternoon sell off. Yet nothing m...
Post a Comment

Deere And Something Crazy

The stock Deere is extremely volatile and options on it with one day to go are, for lack of better words, explosive. Explosive beyond belief. Small retail investors are advised to stay away. They are very thinly traded. Just stay away! Now here is how it traded this morning, Friday July 28th.
So at this point in time just before 1:00 p.m. it is down $.17 cents on the day. If you owed the stock and were just checking it to see it's current value it would make you just yawn. When I look at it it makes me want to scream in disbelief! At 11:57 p.m. here is what the $375.00 Puts which are $.17 cents "out-of-the-money" Puts are trading at. Do they offer good value? Maybe. Yet that's not my point. Focus instead at how low they these contracts traded at prior in the day. Can you see that they traded down to $.08 cents when the stock was trading well over 380! Image catching this action and predicting the downside around 10:45 a.m. Deere can move five dollars in one day and that is what it decided to do this time.
Now have a look at the current bid and ask. Bid $.58 or fifty eight dollars per contract and ask $1.14 or one hundred and fourteen dollars per contract. Have you ever witnessed a spread that wide apart? Crazy. Now this. Deere has 275,570,300 shares outstanding. Why are there not thousands of shareholders watching these options looking to catch these magnified option price swings? Why has the propostion of trading contracts like this become so foreign? Am I wasting my energies following stuff like this? I don't think so. Now this, a different visual look at how these Puts are trading at 1:51 p.m. only seven minutes later with the stock now down another eleven cents. Can you see how sensitive these price movements are. It's amazing.
Now this. It's 2:06 p.m.,some ten minutes later. There was one more contract sold. The price it sold for this time was $1.10.
When fund managements companies boast of 15% annual return rates I have to ask myself this question. Why can't they invest monies in programed option trading to catch short term price movements like this as short as this. It seems kind of silly to be doing anything else but this. Now more of the same action eight minutes later.
What ended up happening to these Puts at 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon? That's the deadline when retail traders have to sell out. Here is it's chart.
Now this.
At around 3:00 p.m. these Puts hit a high of $4.58 . Not a shabby return for those traders bold enough to consider the "out-of-money" Puts on a Friday morning.

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