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CarMax Puts?

 Here is the number. Call in to listen to their just released quarterly report. You won't have to talk to anyone. It is 800-839-1247. In about five days this link will disappear. Please listen to it. I listened to all of it once and to the first half of it two times. What I learned is that their retail car sales on the quarter compared to the same quarter a year were up 6%. They purchased 336.000 vehicles from the public, up 7% and 48.000 from dealers up 38%. Their average retail sale price was $26,100, down $400.00 per vehicle from last year. They doubled their share buy back program. AI technologies are now helping them operate more efficiently. Everything seems positive. But wait, we are talking about  the used car business and what could happen if consumer confidence suddenly starts to wain? Look at it's three year chart. It now sees to be hitting a rough patch.  Now a one month chart.  All of this talk about tariffs and what level of tariffs will be imposed on n...
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The Trade of the Year

It's not that complicated however it kind of slipped under the radar. It was a big name company we all know called Lowes. The payoff was wild. What are we looking at? Options that closed on Thursday at ten cents a contract and opened at one cent the folling morning, a Friday which then then hit an interday high of one dollar and fifty cents. A one thousand dollar investment would have went as high as $150,000.00. Folks, all of this is legal and anyone can play it. You could have made it all by lunchtime.
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What happened? Well we are talking about the 200 series on Calls that expired yesterday on Friday July 23th. At the start of the trding session they were over $3.00 "out-of-the money. Very few traders saw value in them. Yet Lowes did close strong on Thursday the day before it. Then it wobbled a touch on the Friday opening and resumed it's upward charge. The price of lumber is dropping and many people are waiting to purchase lumber at these new lowering prices. The kicker is that four dollar moves on stocks in the two hundred dollar price range in one day happen more often than you think. This was the trade of the year! **Buying options on a stock two dollars out-of-the-money on the last day of the life of a series of Calls or Puts is difficult to . I looked the Lowes 200 Put series at 1:53 p.m. and wondered if going in the opposite way offered an opportunity but opted not to play it. Here is what I saw. They ended up expiring worthless.
In my opinion, Friday morning Call options which expire that day (meaning in the ten minutes or so of trading) sometimes offer interesting trading opportunities as you are catching the fresh winds of morning exuberance.

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