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Walmart Again

On Monday I did a blog on buying this week's Call options on Walmart for a morning move. Today is now Thursday and there was a big sell off in the markets yesterday. Tesla sold off for example and here is what happened to it. Today it is slightly rebounding as are so many other stocks. Thursdays however as oftened mentioned in recent blogs are not a good time to be purchasing one day options on stocks that expire the next day. Times change. In less chaotic times that's not always case. In the last few years there would be known upcoming Friday morning events like the release farm payroll numbers or other economic readings that would move the needle on the markets going up or down on on a Friday morning. In those markets it paid to get into option positions before the closing on a Thursday to get out on the Friday morning bounces were caused by the release of these premarket reports. So how is any of this revelant to Walmart's trading today? Well, there was a whole bunch o...
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This One Is Too Nervous To Watch. Pfizer

This is a medium sized blog full of twists. Try to get through it. First a five day chart of Pfizer.
In the past week it was up $1.05 and it was the 7th most activity traded stock on the NYSE most active list. It's in a breakout mode. Look at how it traded over the last three years. This breakout mode might last a few days, weeks or months. This stock has a history of moving somewhat slower than most stocks. A second quarter earnings report comes out July 30th. If it's good that could add a touch to the stock's price.
Now this.
As a general rule stocks and options on stocks in this particular price range are difficult to play and in this case everyone is following the same story. Fred down the street and John around the corner and Mark across town are all dialed into the same commentary. There is nothing that really gives you an edge when it comes to playing it. That's the problem. Here now is a look at the Pfizer "next-week-out" $30.00 series of Call options, this being Friday July 19th. They are 3 cents "out-of-money".
They might at first glance look reasonable in price and the "end-of-the-day" "open-interest" number is healthy. It's not like smart option traders were purposely staying away. Some day traders have decided to hang on to their positions over the weekend. That's generally not really a smart thing to be doing because Monday's sometime clobber options going from their fifth to their fourth of trading life. I would say "just say" away on Monday and come back to it in a day or two. A Monday closing look at the action. It did not move up in the morning. It went down. Here are the 30 series of Calls, the same one's we were talking about last Friday, now only nine minutes into the mornings action..
That's like a fifty percent haircut in the first ten minutes of trading!
Now just skip ahead two day to July 26th. Look at how the markets did today.
Down big time. Now look at how the same series of options are now trading. Pfizer is up on a down day, the same as it was last week on a major down day.
Now this.
With two days to go and markets upside down this is a tumultuous situation to be in. Last Friday this series of Calls closed at $.37 and now on a Wednesday closing they are $.18 cents. Yet the stock popped today and here is it's one day chart. Could it jump on the opening tomorrow?
Thursday are generally not good days to being buying into Call options that will be expiring the next day however Thursday mornings sometimes open stronger with economic news releases being more prevelant towards the end of the weeks. Let's see if tomorrow brings a selling opportunity. Now this on Thursday morning. Would you be getting out if you owned these Calls?
Thursday. The party happened. If your lucky you got out and who cares what the option does next. Remember back on Wednesday things didn't look that good.
In this case all the action was over at 10:10 a.m. . * Note this. At 9:48.am. the Calls were up 94% and were trading at $.35 . Then at 10:08 a.m. they reached a high of $.96 That was a sweet spot. Now. here is how this option series ended up closing the week.
..........
Notice the trading volume was way down from the previuos day? Why is that? Traders nursing these Calls all week were just happy with Thursdays action.

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