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Bad News On Caterpillar Going Into a Friday.

Here is how the stock traded on a Thursday.There was nothing unusual about the day. I am suprised they would dump this news on the market going into a Friday trading session. It messes up option traders. Doing this type of an announcement on a Tuesday prior to the markets opening would be a less disruptive day to do this. Here is the news. In a way this wasn't totally unexpected news. As they said, there were several other recent updates on this issue. Auto companies in their recent quarterly reports were harping on this issue. Look at how it dropped in price in the after market trading. Now here is how one series of Puts closed the day. Look at how this news totally caught the markets by suprise. The secrecy of this news is a credit to Caterpillar. If Caterpillar had this news are Deere Call holders going to get worried? Here is what happened on Friday morning. Now Deere which is now also trying to shake off this bad news. These two stocks tend to trade in similiar ways. He...
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Rivian

What does it mean when someone dumps 875,000 shares of Rivian at 3:59:59 p.m. at $13:45? That's a twelve million dollar ticket.That happened yesterday after the stock sputtered around all day on low volumes of trading. (It usually trades about 26 million shares a day so the 875,000 share ticket may not be all that unusual).
That was calculated timing, perhaps computer programmed selling. Would that send off shock waves on it's following mornings trading. Not really.
Look at what happened in the first minute of the opening trading the next day. A block of 275,017 shares traded at 9:30:59 a.m. at $13:71. What does this point out? First, it might point out how computerized trading triggers trades to happen in the last second of the first minute of trading in any new session. How you can profit from that observation is something you will have to figure out on your own. It also points out how infinitesimally inconsequential all of the retail option trading is. Your purchase of five Calls on Boeing that expire this Friday is as significant as a fly landing on the back of a horse. It also points out the efficiencies of the markets. So the next question is how can the little guys make money playing options when the system with it's computerized buy and sell programs is as tight as it is? In some ways retail option traders should find some assurances in the markets having this much depth. For example, from my experience the market makers can not mess around with buy and sell orders going in "at market" at 3:59:57 or 3:59:58 p.m. That's a good thing. Happy trading.

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