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A Jumpy Week For Caterpillar - A Week With Earning Reports

Here is Thursday's trading on the day on Caterpillar. Here is how the $417.50 calls that expire tomorrow closed the day. Something happened this week. Caterpillar had a quarterly earning report come out on Tuesday. It's stock trading action survived this news unscathed. Here is it's five day chart as of the end of Thursday. Maybe the 420.00 or the 422.50 series Calls are better to look at? Here they are. But wait. Deere got clobbered today on the release of a quarterly earning's report. Why didn't Caterpillar sell off in price in sympathy? It shoud have. Deere sold off $34.70. For this reason alone I would be more inclined to purshase the Puts. Here is the series I would consider. To be continued.
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"Apple" at 3:15 p.m.

Last week we talked about "Apple" being a nice stock to trade options on and one of the reasons given was it's one dollar spreads on it's option. Most other stocks in that price range have options on them which have wider striking prices. A 120 Call, a 122.50 Call and a 125 Call for example. That's what you are most likely to see. That being said, the underlying price swings with these "other stocks" needs more of a noticeable and extended directional move to be able to play them successfully. Weekend articles mentioned "Apple" doing well in a rising interest rate environment because of it's abilities to make money on borrowed money forming low cost debt. I wouldn't read too much into that. Today with the D.J.I up 90 points going into the closing trading hour of the day look at how well the 13 series of Call options that expire this week are trading. Up slow and steady all afternoon.
Notice also one again how the volume of daily trading in this series exceeds the open interest. That's always the way it is. The focus always seems to be on interday trading. ^^^^^^^^^ A Next day update. Notice how the market was down and the volumes of trading was way down.
All things considered the stock rallied again on the opening and then off slightly and these premiums dropped accordingly. Let's now look at how the "Puts" now looked on todays action, this time the 134 Puts and not the 133 Puts. Money can be made both ways.
You can see the low of the day on these "Puts" was about 1:20 p.m. when Apple spiked a touch.

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