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Put Options On The High Flying Stock "Sandisk" Are Difficult To Play

I have ignored this stock all year, not knowing much about it. The stock is Sandisk and it doesn't pay a dividend. Sometimes I think that the stock has gone up to much in price to quickly. Is trying to play it for the downside with one week Put options the way to go? Why try and play Puts on a stock that never seems to go down? Why not just ride the Calls up? The stock is up $52.00 on the day. At noon on a Monday here is what one series of it's "just-in-the-money" Puts look like. Do these premiums seem to be abnormally high? Yes. $59.00 dollars means $5,900.00 dollars per contract. If you are new to option trading stay away from these ones. Other stocks trading in this price range like Costco have options on them trading at much lower prices. Here is an example of what I am talking about. If we look back at a blog I did last week on Caterpillar you will see how much of the time premuim built into the pricing on these "one-week-to-expiring-options" decreas...
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An Introduction Of Sort.

My name is Peter and about 45 years ago I did a short gig as a “Merrill Lynch” in Canada. I live in Ontario, Canada about a two hour drive away from Detroit. I like playing options and my focus is mainly on U.S. stocks. Prior to my gig at "Merrill" which lasted about two years I worked for another then well known Canadian brokerage firm that had a fancy office on the 55th floor of a downtown Toronto office building. They occupied the entire floor. In essence they were a "boiler room" operation (which dated back to the 1930's). Their focus on penny mining stocks and at that time they were a major player in that space. It soon became apparent that my style of trading not fit in well. Other rookies starting taking clues from me which somewhat exacerbated top managment. I was busy watching things like Exxon and IBM options. I didn't care about penny stocks. Then I transferred with the same organization to an office in another smaller city where I discovered that the back office skim money off my more profitable trades. Stroke off one fill price and ink in another after consulting with the office manager who drank a lot. A fill of ten option contracts on Exxon at $3.50 would be reported to me a $3.25. Not fun. A lady named Marilyn was doing this. I did end up confronting her about this with no avail. (They didn't do skimming back at the Toronto back office, it was a much larger operation). Then I switched to Merrill and everything was there above board. Things were obviously different back then. I now work in an unrelated profession and oddly enough I still have the designation of being a Broker. I sell real estate. Time flys I still have a passion for option trading. I like Fridays for trading "one-day" options. Six of my favourite stocks to now trade options on are Caterpillar, Ford, Exxon, Deere, Tesla and Boeing. Caterpillar actually is my least favorite one of these six stocks to trade. Option trading on it is thin. I also speculate in options on stocks in the five and ten dollar price range. They can suprise. There are times when I will take a week off from watching the market, knowing full well that I will be not be handicapped in playing when I return to the action. In fact I return with fresh eyes. I read Barron's on the weekend. I need to be on a routine to play options and I don't trade with other people's money. Donald Trump helped to make option trading easier. He says things which make the markets move. Let me now share with you what I am watching in the option markets. Some blogs are better than others. Some blogs get deleted with time. Tesla is the stock I have the most luck trading. I don't see that changing soon. Cheers.

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