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Costco. It's Short Term Options

 Options on stocks in the $1,000  range often move  50%  or more in only a matter of  minutes on the opening on Wednesday and Thursday's . The trick is to  anticipate correctly which way the markets are going to move. That's a fools game you might say? Yes and no. It may not be a game you ever play but it might be something to consider to put in your bag of tricks when you are on a role. One thousand dollar stocks sometimes move five, ten or fifteen dollars on the day. If you have profits it's best to take them quickly. Costco is a prime example of that. Let's look at this mornings action. First it's five day and one day charts. Tuesday's trading was kind of choppy. Might it drop on the opening tomorrow? Here is a look at where the 1,035 series of Puts closed that expire this Friday. They closed at $8.50. It looks like Costco cycled up about five times yesterday. Given a weak market opening doesn't it stand to reason a three or four or five dollar will be i...
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Caterpillar Calls. Our last Blog Was About Caterpillars Calls A Week Ago Last Friday. Here We Are Now Talking About The Same Thing.

The open interest numbers in Caterpillar Calls last week was negligible. Here is a look at the Caterpillar 237.5O Calls at 12:14 P.M. a week ago Friday. Look at the open interest number. It's next to nothing.
Now here is a look at one series of Caterpillar calls, this time the 250 Calls at 11:53 A.M. last Friday Nov 17th. They were up over 300% in that morning's trading action and the stock was up $16.00 in one week! What I find so strange is that so few traders were using Call options to catch this strong directional move. The surge in the stocks price was afterall one of the largest "one week" surges this year. All of the short term, mid term and long term Call options exploded upwards in price. Here is a look at the Caterpillar 250 Calls at 11:23 a.m. which where to expire that same day. Yes the open interest numbers were up a touch however they were still next to nothing.
Here now is a five day look at it's trading.
Now a 30 day look at this stock.
So why once again are so few option traders playing them? Why not just focus on this one stock? It baffles me. Things to ponder. 1) In 2022 Caterpillar had 109,100 employees. Why wouldn't at least 200 or 500 hundred of them watch the option market on their companies stock and jump in and use Calls and Puts as trading vehicles at times like this when the stock is hot? 2) Rebuilding the damages caused by wars and global warming. Caterpillar has to be there. Goverments will find the money needed to rebuild all that is destroyed. 3) The short position in Caterpillar. It's somewhere around 1.3% of the float or the short interest ratio / days to cover is 2.5 days. That's nothing. When this stock decides to move up for whatever reason there is nothing really to hold it back. Boeing jumped a chunk today on an analyst upgrade. Analysts are more prone to do that in good markets. If Caterpillar could jump 15 of 20 dollars why can't Boeing? That's logical thinking.
$270 from $204. Announcements of $220 from $204 are more the norm. Deere is yet another stock to watch for price swings. Options that expire in 30 days seem to be best to play in markets like this.

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