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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...

Disappointment on The Opening - Caterpillar Earnings Report

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Caterpillar's earnings report. What I see is 4th quarter sales up 23%. Strong 4th quarter earnings of $3.71 per share.That's a solid number. Just think, the supply chain issue isn't being used as a mistake. Now look at the the opening options market. The stock is down on the news. Management made a few remarks about near term headwinds. They do that sometimes to temper growth expectations. These two quotes are the 205 Call series which expire today. One is at 9:44 a.m. and one is at 10:03 a.m.. They would be very dangerous to consider purchasing since its very unlikely that they could ever shake off this downward spike so early in the morning. So now what? It's at this time in the morning when the decision to reacte to this bad news gets tricky. The stock is down like ten dollars and the DJI is having a good day. There is a strong tempation to jump in on the upside hoping for a quick reversal. That's one of the things that makes option trading so difficult. One...