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Why The Appeal Of Trading Caterpillar Options Is Now Diminishing

In previous blogs I looked at Caterpillar spiking upwards through the $1,000.00 barrier for the very first time. Twenty and thirty and forty dollar daily jumps on the stock were the norm. Today we are entering more sobering times. Pundits are now commenting on the upcoming release on August 4th of Caterpillar's quarterly earning report. That is not far away. The stock has doubled in price in a relatively short period of time. Is the party over? Look at Caterpillars one year chart. The companies earnings have not doubled in the last year. Far from it. So now what? Buy a Put option thirty days out in the hopes the stock might drop ten percent on a more normalized earning's report? Maybe. Here is an example of the cost of what one of these Puts would look like. Given it's current bid and ask the stock would have to drop to the $1,005.00 just to break even. It could, however most active option day traders are seeking opportunities which can play out in hours or in a day. Case...

Roku And It's 2nd Quarter Earning Report

Let's start with the time period of Thursday morning with an earning's report coming out after the closing bell. Look at how crazy expensive these three series of Call options are. They are the Roku "out-of-the-money" Call options that expire tomorrow. The volume in them is not all that crazy but if I owned the stock I would be tempted to sell the Calls against my position and hope they would expire worthless. Tomorrow is Friday August 2nd.
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Why pay so much? Why pay $4.05 for a Call with a striking price of "58" with one trading day to go in the contract? The stock would have to jump four dollars just to get your money back? Talk about stupid? Yet then again Netflix, a company also in a similiar space sometimes moves like ten dollars in one day. Here now is a look at what happened by showing tomorrow's five day chart.
Down $2.19 on the day to $53.14 with the DJIA down over 600 points.
Say goodbye to those Calls if you ever bought in. Now let's look at it's year-to-date chart.
Can you see how it dropped about $35.00 quickly on the release of it's first quarter's earnings? That's part of the reason why these Calls were so expensive. On good news it could have really popped. So what were it's second quarter earnings actually like?
It's still reporting losing money per share however their guidance is starting to look more promising. Having the markets drop over 600 points on the day (it was down even more than at one point during the day) really squashed any upside potential. The game never ends. Here now is how next weeks 53, 54 and 55 series of Calls are trading.
Pick you battle. How did things turn out four days later in a crummy market? Not good. Look at these same options. People however are now waking up to the fact that the quarterly earnings report was not all that bad. Trading options is never a walk in the park. There is still time for these Calls to suprise.
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