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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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A 2024 Post. So An Analyst Jump Started The Year.

It's the first trading session of the year and the x-mas chatter is that the world is still in a mess, consumers are overextended, rents might be softening and EV sales are hitting a rough patch. So what's the analyst jump start I am talking about?
This isn't the first time it has jumped in a while. Look at this one day jump in mid December a few years ago.
The stock also did jump from $15.92 on Sept 1st 2019 to $384.86 on Sept 1st 2021. Now look at the price of the 115 puts for this friday. The time of this reading was 1:48 p.m. after the morning jump was over.
So this analyst is really reporting nothing new and simple playing the odds of getting recognized for an early year claim, knowing that the media is starving for news. Yet trying to play the downside on news that is not really news is a tough way to start the year. There are better things to be watching. (See my last's weeks blog on Costco falling). Now see how this series of Puts closed out the day.
Let's see what happens next. It dropped again the following morning. It will not drop forever. Time to move on to something different. Now note the open interest as of yesterdays close. Read what it is. The answer is ONE. That is amazing! Just one. Then see below the number 353 which represents the closing open interest. Subtract this number from the number 1011 and that's the number of in and out contracts traded on the day. Day traders, true to their name were in and out, missing the sizeable drop in share price on the following morning. It all makes sense. Dine and dash.
It also makes me wonder how many insiders played the upside with advance knowledge of this upgrade coming. That is something the regulators should be jumping on.

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