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Caterpillar Calls. Trying To Make It Simple

So if you like the stock Caterpillar and want to play the upside on it using options you could buy these ones. But why would you? They are up 46% on the day so the real money was made in buying them yesterday and selling them today. The stock would now have to go up about $25.00 in one month just to break even and everything above that price would be profits. If you now look at a thirty day chart you will see that's what it did last month. These are "one month-out" options which are ten dollars "in-the-money" and they trade in a different fashion than short term options. Yet that not what I want to talk about. I note that only 13 contracts traded on this series on the day and the open interest in them stands at only 11. What does this tell us? 1) It tells us that professional money managers are totally lacking in their understandings of the dynamics of option trading. 2) It tells us that retails traders are to some degree misguided by the learning materials ma...
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Young People And Options

Let me spill out some information. Next-Generation Investors Are Different. An organization called "Finra" published this information. In a 2021 survey the Finra Investor Education Foundation found that 36% of respondents aged 18 t0 34 said they have traded options. That compares with 21% of respondents ages 35 to 54 and just 8% of respondents age 55 and older. Then there are crypto investors. According to something called a Pew Research survey based on Feb 2024 data, 42% of men aged 18-29 have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency compared with 17% of women in the same age range. Interestly, just 17% of all adults say they have invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency, according to the same 2024 survey. When it comes to buying on margin,in 2021, just under of a quarter, or 23%, of investors ages 18 to 34 said they have made purcheses on margin, compared with 12% of respondents aged 34 to 54 and 3% of respondents age 55 and older. Opening accounts is now easier and there's an explosion of new sources of information and social networks that can encourage risky behaviors. Let's not forget the recent frenzy of meme stock trading. Robinhood knows all this and works in this space.
Look at how it's stock has traded in the last one year.
My point is that young people are experimenting with option trading and the trend is only going to continue. Pick twenty or thirty stocks and just watch them for a few months. Write down turning points you see happening and check out how much at that point in time a Call or a Put costs on any series you pick. Then check back later to see if you were correct in making such a call. Option trading, unfortunately is very much a self taught process.

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