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The Markets Never Stop. The Stock Lowes And Forward Looking Thinking.

An earning's report came out and some of the reason's the stock dropped made sense. Let me tell you what happened and why. Lowe's sold off in price over $12.00 in one day on an earnings report. How bad was the report? Well that is something that is debatable. Some people would say that past sales are not a good indication as to what might happen next. Not many option traders attempted to trade in it. Some traders derive more pleasure in playing the rebounds after these types of announcements come out. Here is what their C.E.O said. It is her job to try to put was a positive spin on things. Every word she uttered was well rehearsed. Lowes and Home Depot are always difficult to play because their stories can be spun in so many different ways. On a different note, the Put options five dollars "out-of-the-money", which were the 265 series of Puts were a cheaper and a more profitable way to play this action than the 270 Puts. Yet then again, if the stock only dro
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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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