Featured

Learning To Pick Your Battles

In the last week or so I have done four blogs on Walmart and each time I seem to show situations where traders can eke out small profits tracking the 91 or 91 series of Call options. What is the logic in such an approach? Well look at Walmarts one year chart compared to two other charts I have provided. The difference of coarse is that Walmart's trading pattern has an upwards bias. One other factor comes into play in helping to make Walmart interesting options to play. The one dollar spreads between the "bid" and "ask" unlike the two dollar and fifty cent spreads between the "bids' and "asks" on stocks like Caterpillar and Boeing. This has the effect of making small changes in a stocks price more playable. Walmart also seems to have "less chatter". What do I mean by this? Well its not like Boeing which has scares of doors coming lose on their airplanes or like Caterpillar which is having to constantly adjust the size of their workfo...
Post a Comment

Another Positive Reaction To A Poor Quarterly Earnings Report

In my most recent blog I talked about Lowes and how the narrative of "poor earnings" was turned into a positive. Sales were off and the stock dropped however two days later it's right back up again. Playing options on the news found in quarterly earnings reports can be tricky. It's easier sometimes to rationalize the exercse of purchasing of Calls after a stock has dropped than it is to buy Puts in anticipation a drop. Yesterday Deare came out with a shockingly poor earnings report and the stock jumped $28.00 on that news. What heck was that all about?
Read the details of how off their sales were off in different divisions. What makes you think things are going to turn around? A 10% or 15% recent decline is something that could be shrugged off but not declines of let's say 38%. Do you know how difficult it is going to be to ramp things back up again? How do you know demand will pick up again? Wouldn't company insiders know these results were going to be so poor and wouldn't they be shorting the stock? The funny part is if they did they would have got smoked. Here also is what adds to the confusion.
Now this, a look at this one particular series of Call options which were well "of-the-money" going into the markets opening.
Notice the crazy high Call option volumes. Look at the number of 3,761 contracts traded in this one series. We typically see numbers of let's say 5 or 8 or 16 contracts a day. How can this be explained? Contrast this to the volume of trading in the 400 series of Calls which were closer to where the stock was trading at on the close of the previous day.
Now here is how Deere was trading one hour into the following days trading(Nov.22nd).It's holding its gain with the markets up a touch. I would have thought that there would be some profit taking.
*** There is a mystery to this blog which still needs to be explained. It's the "out-of-the-money" Call option number of 3,761 contracts. A chart from Yahoo finance verifies the truth of this number. Do you see the 3,761 number again on Nov. 21st? It sticks out like sore thumb. It was an "in-and-out" one day trade.
A price swing on the day of $.52 to $11.97 on an option series wildly "out-of-the-money". It's nuts. Is this artificial trading? Read this.
One final thought. A look at how Caterpillar recently jumped on it's earnings report about two weeks ago and where it is now.
It makes you wonder if Puts on Deere should now be something to consider. ** Read my November 22nd 2023 blog about Deere and it's then current earning's report.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Trump Media Technology Options With Three Days To Go.

Image
On Tuesday just after 3:00 p.m the Trump Media Technology Options had stop traded again. What is the next 24 hours going to bring? Who knows. So many option traders follow this stock and most are afraid to buy either Call or Put Options on it because their premiums are so expensive. If Trumph wins the stock should soar and if he loses the stock will tank. The option premiums are priced expensively in both directions. Here now is how both the Calls and Puts traded on the opening today. First the Calls six minutes into the opening. Now the Puts. Now a look at how these options played the day. With a "stop trading" situation the option session ended a little bit early as evidenced in these following readings. Notice also how low the open interest number is in these Puts. Option traders for the most part opted to stay away from this situation. Now this. Trump wins. Here is how the 38 series of Calls traded just after the opening at 10:11 a.m.. The stock is up however the...
Read more

Another Earnings Report - "Roku" - Thursdays and Friday Trading.

Image
Please read this Roku "earnings report" blog. Roku was down fifteen dollars in the first hour of trading today after the release of it's third quarter earnings report. Here is a 10:52 a.m. look at one series of Puts that doubled in price on the opening as a result of this sell off. In my last blog on Caterpillar I talked about points of inflection where stocks rebound after bad news. This time an inflection point may not be in the cards. Caterpillars earning were just shy of expections but nothing had really changed. The world still needs their products and they are still a dominant player in their industry. Roku is a different animal. Their subscribers are a fickle bunch. Companies like Roku and Netflix go up and down all the time. Roku now is just back to a level at which it was trading at earlier this year. I don't know how to interpret their financial statements. Things still look pretty good for them to me. Once again here is a look at the increase in the value...
Read more