CAT Puts

This is my third blog on Walmart in the last six trading sessions. There are reasons why I am shadowing this stock. I mentioned some of the reasons in my past two blogs and the main reason I am shadowing Walmart is that it's the X-mas holiday season and in the last few trading sessions there has being no news out about how holiday sales are going. That's a good thing. In the next week or so thats going to all change. I also note that Costco is down about five percent in the last thirty days so really I am skating on thin ice. Without getting ahead of myself I just want to say it was thin ice skating on this one for a short time today around noon. I will get to that shortly. The truth is that I might compleletely forget about this stock in the next few weeks and move onto something else. It has done me well and it is one that I can comfortably come back to when I feel the timing is right. The markets on Monday morning sold off on the opening so anyone who took the risk of holdin...

A stupid move? Right? Maybe. The thought of buying options that expire in two hours. Let me try to explain something that might be missing in your thinkings. Here is a list of five strong stocks that everyone knows about from watching the markets of 2024. Apple, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Nvidia. If a retracement of a morning selloff is ever going to happen on a Friday afternoon odds are you should be watching these ones if you are a short term option player. Last Friday, as mentioned in my previous blog the DJIA was down 333 points. Here now is a one day chart of Meta on that day which was Friday December 27th. Hone in now (hone is a word seldom used) on the 12:30 p.m. time period which is 2.5 hours prior to when Friday's options will expire for retail traders. One week out options are also interesting options to consider at this same time period because they would also benefit from an after rebound or the firming of the markets after a morning drop. T...

First a comment I opened with on a previous blog (see July 7th) . It was on the topic of one day option trading. Next the Caterpillar chart on Thursday December 27th. Yes this is another blog about one day options. At the close on Thursday it's up roughly two dollars from it's previous close last Friday. Looking at it's Thursdays one day chart do you think it might lose some of it's momentum on the Friday morning opening? Don't be alarmed if you see the spike in it's volume on it's Thursday closing. That doesn't mean much. It's a common occurance. Now a Friday morning chart of Caterpillar in it's first 24 minutes of trading. It opened down $3.00 a share and rebounded to where it closed on the previous day. Notice in this time period only 16 contracts traded. That's crazy. Why didn't 1,600 contracts trade? It tells us the world of one day option trading is still in its infancy. Where is this artificial intelligence everyone is talking a...

How do you learn about stuff like this? One way is to look at raw data. Here is the raw data on how five different stocks traded last Friday. Only that Friday. We don't care about any other day. After looking at these charts I want tell you I know what your answer its going to be to this question. The question is, is there anything in particular that stands out about the one day trading patterns of these five stocks? Your answer is going to be they are all different. Good answer. If you are ever going to start trading one day options wouldn't it make sense to pick five of your favorite stocks and save the histories of how these stocks have traded on recent Fridays. Tesla swings big and it would be interesting to see its last four week's Friday trading histories. Tesla has the added intrigue of having higher risk "out-of-the-money" options that are known to burst in price on twenty or forty dollar swings.Tesla stock sometimes does that in one day. (Other stocks n...

On Monday I did a blog on buying this week's Call options on Walmart and at the time of writing it I was looking for a small morning upward move which did then happen. Today is now Thursday and there was a big sell off in the markets yesterday. Tesla for example sold off and here is a five day chart showing what happened to it. Today it is slightly rebounding as are most other stocks.(That often happens on the day after the DJIA drops 620 points! Traders jump in looking for bargains). Thursdays however as oftened mentioned are not the best of times to be buying into "one-day-options" on stocks that expire the very next day. In less chaotic times that would not always have been the case. Things like the release of farm payroll reports would often come out just before the markets opened on Fridays and they would help move the needle on the indexes going up or down. Getting into option positions on a Thursday with the intentions of getting out in the premarkets or just after...