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McDonald's. It's Difficult To Fight Strong Stocks.

Here is McDonalds five day chart at the close on Wednesday. Now here is it's three month chart. Now consider this. In two days the stock is up about twelve dollars. I often talk about Wednesdays being the one day in the week the markets can do reverals. Today the DJIA was up over four hundred points and McDonalds was down 60 cents. It dipped on the opening and came back a bit and then selling pressure came into the stock again on the closing. I personally hate McDonald's food. The internet has tens of Youtube videos saying their fries are poisonous. Yet I get it. But think about this. Whenever a new residential subdivision goes in anywhere in North America there is room for another one of their restaurants to go in. They just pop up and everyone knows what they are. Here now is a snippet I posted in a past McDonald's blog. After a lackluster trading session today McDonald's could drop in the next two days or at least on a Thursday afternoon sell off. Yet nothing m...
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Remember Moderna?

Here is it's year to date chart. Look at the volume of trading coming into it towards the end of November.
Now it's five day chart.
What do I know about this stock that other traders know about this stock that might cause it to go up? Well nothing really. It's next earnings report does not come out until February 2025.
Look at this series of Call options near the stock's current selling price that expire this Friday. That's two trading days away. It's Wednesday morning, the one day of the week you sometimes see market reversals. This series of Call options could be hot potatoes.
Now here they are thirty one minutes later.
Now another seventeen minutes later.
These options still have 2.5 trading days of action in them. Anything could happen. Look at how Eli Lilly is trading on the day. It's up $22.00 at this point in time.There is no negativity today surrounding stocks in this segment of the market.
Yet anything could happen. 1:19 p.m. trouble. Things are stalling out.
Now at 1:27 p.m. things start to drop.
Here is how they closed out the day.
Now this, the activity on Thursday morning.
A nice jump upwards with the DJIA moving down.
Look at the high of $1.35 which is more that double the closing price of $.60 and above the bid-ask of $.80-$.95 when we first started this exercise. One question is would you have the stomach to play ten contracts on a situation like this? As a general rule one has to be more nimble playing options on $40.00 stocks that options on higher priced stocks like Tesla where the stakes are higher, as are the rewards. Here for example is this mornings action on Tesla and a look at how an "out-of-the-money" Call option reacted.
Yet the question then becomes the one of how do you know this was going to be the day that this breakout occurred? If you look at it's chart you will see that it did nothing in the last three days. Now back to Moderna. Good news! It's 12:30 p.m. on Thursday.
If you where holding these Calls how would you play them? One crazy way is to say now might be to say take some of your profits and play it the other.
If your doing it with profits is that wise? Should you be just chilling out and saying thank you, your trading activites for the week are over? Here is what one series of tommorrows Puts look like. Some traders got in closer to the $.20 mark and can already take their profits. Timing is everything.
Here is how these two Moderna option series closed out Thursday. First the Calls.
Now the puts.
Now Moderna's one day chart.
Moderna is known to suprise. Now Friday morning action.
What a happy ending for Call holders.
Look at the high of $4.40 on the day!

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