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Caterpillar Calls. Trying To Make It Simple

So if you like the stock Caterpillar and want to play the upside on it using options you could buy these ones. But why would you? They are up 46% on the day so the real money was made in buying them yesterday and selling them today. The stock would now have to go up about $25.00 in one month just to break even and everything above that price would be profits. If you now look at a thirty day chart you will see that's what it did last month. These are "one month-out" options which are ten dollars "in-the-money" and they trade in a different fashion than short term options. Yet that not what I want to talk about. I note that only 13 contracts traded on this series on the day and the open interest in them stands at only 11. What does this tell us? 1) It tells us that professional money managers are totally lacking in their understandings of the dynamics of option trading. 2) It tells us that retails traders are to some degree misguided by the learning materials ma...

Toyota

Very few option contracts trade on Toyota. I have wondered why and offer one potential explanation. It's listed on multiple exchanges around the world and "option makers" in North America are basically just following the action. If the markets open stronger in North America that means Toyota traded stronger overnight on markets overseas. Secondly, the Calls and Puts trade in incriments of five dollars.There are for example 135 Calls, 140 Calls, 145 Calls. Having a five dollar spread wipes out the incentive try to daytrade option series which are soon to expire. If the stock moves from 142 to 143 the "bids and asks" on a 140 series of Calls might hardly change. It's not like trading the stock like Boeing where you can get in and out with option series set up in increments of $2.50 . Here is it's one month charts. The company now has a new C.E.O who is getting criticized for not moving to go electric quickly enough.
What I am now about to show you might discredit some of my above points. It's a five day chart on Toyota and look how all the action seems to happen on the opening. Why? It's the effect of overnight trading on other markets. Our North American trading follows Toyota's overseas market trading.
Now back to my point of how contracts trade. A volume of three and twelve contracts in the 140 Calls and Puts series that expire soon. Look at how wide apart the "bids and asks" are and how low the outstanding number of open contracts are. It's crazy.
Toyota is a great company. It's just not one that attracts option players.

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