CAT Puts

Here is what happened. Costco goes down on the opening. Charts like this is not pretty. McDonald's goes up. Confused? Why the interest in McDonald's? It's just junk food. If the market rolls over might this stock lose some of it's steam? Now look at these Puts? The volume of trading in them is next to nothing. Without knowing why it's going up makes the purchase of Puts too much of a gamble. Now lets look at these same Puts at 2:24 p.m. They got wiped out. What's Costco doing? Here is where things get interesting. The markets are still strong. Costco is down $74.24 around 2:23 p.m.! It's having a bad day but the stock now seems to be stabilizing. Now this. A look at it's Calls. Remember for retail option traders you're deadline to get out of these "last-day-to-expiring" options is 3:00 p.m. That's only 42 minutes away from the time of this printout.That doesn't give these options much life. Now consider this, after such a se...

A few years back the markets crashed when Russia invaded Ukraine. The front pages of newspapers around the world at that time showed people trying to escape cities which were heavily shelled. Our heart's sank. How could such atrocities be happening? Why were schools and hospitals targeted? War is evil. Guess what? With Trump acting as a new dictator the world once again has gone awry. It's scary that one old man with so much power can abuse the system. What does all of this mean for option traders? It means time to sit it out on the sidelines. Yes you can jump in playing rebounds and catch some nice short term directional moves. You are basically trading against computers. Why not just sit it out and chill? Everything is amuck. Why be trying to make hero trades? Ironically enough some traders are being drawn into this action. Look at this chart. While its difficult to see because of a "pop-up" on the screen "Netflix rebounded over ten dollars a share after re...

One of the things I elluded to in my last blog is that weekends often act a reset buttons for the market. Sentiment can change. So Boeing jumped on Monday morning and the 175 Calls that expire this Friday went up. Here they are. They hit a high of $5.00. Sometimes it takes thirty or sixty minutes on Monday morning before this sentiment changes. That was the case this morning. Then the market turned south and the DJIA closed dowm 649 points. Let's now watch what this same series of the Puts did. Can you see how options can be valuable trading vehicles in volatile markets? Caterpillar had the same story, a bounce on a Monday morning and an afternoon sell off. The Calls on Caterpillar that closed on Friday at $1.97 bounced as high as $8.40 on Monday morning. Now look at what this same series of the Caterpillar Puts did on the afternoon. What is there to learn from this? Well first don't be angry at yourself for not catching this action. Look at the low volume of Put option...