CAT Puts

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

Look at this action today. I thought I was smart buying a Put on Boeing at 10:47 a.m. as it was charging upwards. Then at noon I bought a Put on Deere when it was going sideways and got out an hour later at a slight profit. Just a normal day. Making $100.00 when I could have hung in and made $1,500. Deere had a sell off. Put option players often dream of being be part of sell-offs like this. Deere had a ten dollar drop in two hours! Why was I determined to get out so early? One thousand in this kind of trade would have made $10,000 which would be a nice way to end a week. I wait weeks and weeks for action like this to happen. I need a drink. How was your day?

Yesterday we looked at the drug stock Moderna as the stock dropped eighteen dollars and twelve cents in one day on no real news and we were following two Call option series, one being "near-the-money" and one being "out-of-money". Today the market dropped another big chunk. Stay away correct? Well kind of. If a stock drops eighteen dollars on one day and if most stocks had large losses what might you consider at do at 3:59:52 p.m. on the day of this fall? You might consider buying "in-the-money" Calls waiting for an uptick on the opening. We talked about the 185 Calls and the 200 series of Calls. The stock closed if you remember at $186.40. Why Moderna and not look at Calls on stocks which dropped by a lessor stock amount? Well eighteen dollars is enough of a drop to attract bargain hunters. Here is what happened on the opening today and here is how the 185 Calls looked in the early morning trading. The stocked bounced to over 190.00 in the first few min

The Dji index is down 500 points in one morning's session and it looks like some stocks might be looking for reasons to rebound. Look at Moderna, a drug stock and it's five day and one day chart as of 12:30 p.m. today. It's down sixteen dollars on the day. . Here are a look at two series of Call options on it which expire at the end of the week. What's now happening? Players are looking for swings. If Moderna was to gain back half of what it lost on the day in the next few hours then the Calls with the two hundred series striking price might rebound back up to three dollars. It's the two dollar options which are trading with more volumes. So option players are looking for a three hour afternoon rebound to make a gain of fifty percent on their investment. Fair is fair but think of all the speculators who bought in when the stock was five or ten dollars higher earlier this morning looking for a rebound. In the big scheme of things when the markets drop five hundre

Polestar is tough to play because a ten or twelve dollar stock takes good news to make it go up. With no news the stock just goes sideways. Rememmber last week how Ford was on a terror and in my last blog I said I don't like buying Call options on a Monday that expire at the end of the week. Ford dropped fifty-nine cents yesterday creating an opportunity to get in today and hope that it rebounds. I don't generally like to pinpoint trading trading opportunities however the good news story on Ford is still the same today as it was last week.

Will Ford jump again this week? Here is how the stock Ford looks in the premarkets Sunday night followed by how Ford traded on Friday January 7th. Will it jump up again this week? Here is it's five day chart and here is a look at the Ford 24.5 Calls which expire this coming Friday. My answer is yes I think it will move up again this week however I am not a fan of purchasing Call options on Mondays on options which expire at the end of the week. So no, I wouldn't be trying to buy in on Monday's opening. I might be wrong but that's the way I think. What will I be watching this week? Deere on the downside. Look what it did last week. Lowe's and Home Depot had bad days last week just as analyst were in the process of upgraded both of these stocks. Look at how low the volumes were in these two Put series last Friday. Trying to play them now either way is a bit of a trap. Earning reports will be coming out and retail stocks are now difficult to play. ** Scroll up

So John Deere was up sharply this morning and when I checked the news about it I read about Deere at a Vegas trade show and driverless tracters. Who wants to go to trade shows during Covid and Caterpillar is busy working on driverless machinery to put in underground mines? To me it wasn't much of an event. Everyone already knows the driverless tractor story. If you own a piece of equipment that costs like $600,000 wouldn't you feel more comfortable putting a driver in it? Now look at how the stock traded the previous day and look at where the stock was at this morning. It was up thirty dollars in only two days and the Call options were up a generous amount of money Ok, as a small time trader wanting to catch some of this action what do you do? Well you could purchase a Put with a striking price over five dollars "out-of-the-money". If the market starts to top out it is inevitable it will give up some of these gains. At 9:53 a.m. after getting out of Ford Puts at go