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A Random Walk In The Park On A Monday Morning. A Caution. Monday Mornings Are Often Not An Option Players Best Friend

Let's start with this. It's now 10:26 a.m. A bet on Caterpillar rebounding by the end of the week. There are no takers. Why have to watch the screen for the next four days in agony waiting for a rebound which if happens is just a "break even trade"? But Wait. I made a mistake. The market is actually now down 668 points. What else can we look at? Interactive Brokers. These kind of stocks always do poorly on days with the threat of margin calls. Yet there is something interesting about the printout I am about to show. It is that these options are "one-month-out" Calls. These longer term options trade differently than short term options. (these options trade in one month intervals). If the stock we are following stops it's freefall the value of the options will nudge up ten, fifteen or twenty percent. A seven dollar option Call might creep back up to $8.00 or $9.00 at which time it could be sold. In contrast with a five day option a slight reversal in ...
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Snowflake and Charts

What the heck do I know about Snowflake? Not much. I know it's symbol. I have Snowflake and First Solar Inc. next to each other on one of the screens I watch and all I know is that their options are volatile. Today is Wednesday Dec 11th.
.....
If the stock was worth $185.00 two days ago why is it only worth $171.00 today? Should I scurry around looking for recent news to help figure out why it is down? At ten a.m. this morning the stock is relatively flat. What does that tell me? It tells me that traders are reassessing the causes of the damage that was done. At the same time I am mystified by the recent spikes in Boeing, Tesla and Rivian. Yet than again there are plausable reasons why those stocks are going up. Rivian is getting money, Tesla has a million things happening.... Which brings me back to Snowflake and First Solar Inc. Their stories don't get quite the same amount of attention. Here is how the 172.50 Calls are trading at 10:05 a.m.
Times change.
It is now 10:33 a.m. and look at those same options.
Ten a.m. on Wednesday morning are good times to be looking for stuff like this. A 12:24 p.m. update.
Picking a time to get out is the difficult part. Now nine minutes later.
What ended up happening on the day? First the one day chart.
Now for this suprise.
There was lots of warning in the mid afternoon that things were starting to change. Wednesdays are great days in the week for action like this. ** How did First Solar trade?
It's five day chart is kind of a flip of a coin.
These Calls are actually pretty cheap given that they are "in-the-money". Here now is it's one day chart.
My thoughts as I have said before is that buying Calls on a Thursday morning that expire the next day is a bit of a trap. Time value quickly can work against you. Wednesday options do not seem to have this worry.

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