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CarMax Puts?

 Here is the number. Call in to listen to their just released quarterly report. You won't have to talk to anyone. It is 800-839-1247. In about five days this link will disappear. Please listen to it. I listened to all of it once and to the first half of it two times. What I learned is that their retail car sales on the quarter compared to the same quarter a year were up 6%. They purchased 336.000 vehicles from the public, up 7% and 48.000 from dealers up 38%. Their average retail sale price was $26,100, down $400.00 per vehicle from last year. They doubled their share buy back program. AI technologies are now helping them operate more efficiently. Everything seems positive. But wait, we are talking about  the used car business and what could happen if consumer confidence suddenly starts to wain? Look at it's three year chart. It now sees to be hitting a rough patch.  Now a one month chart.  All of this talk about tariffs and what level of tariffs will be imposed on n...

Biogen - A Tough Cookie to Play

Drug stocks are difficult to play. One year ago to this date Biogen was trading at $292.20. Today its at $193.61. That's down almost $100.00 on the year.
Now look at it's three year chart.
Back on May 11th 2022 the stock dipped down to $191.07. So the question now is will that now be a support level? That could be something to watch. How do you play options on a stock which has dropped for a year or more? You can't really. The system, for lack of better words has a built in defense mechanism. Let me try to explain it this way. Yes I think a rebound might be imminent for technical reasons however there are barriers to entry. Look for example at how expensive the one month out Calls are.
A May Call contract (one month out) slightly above the current asking price is $8.00 a contract. When was the last time this stock ever went up $8.00 in one month? Well there was one $10.71 bounce between March 6th 2024 and March 12th 2024 so in theory anything could happen. Yet having said that, it's still a crazy price to pay and a risk much to high to take. Now let's look at these Call options that will expire in three days.
Note only 15 contracts traded on the day and an open interest of only 9 contracts. What's more, the spread between the bid and ask is high making it more difficult to trade. What this tells us is that traders don't see any value in trying to navigate in these waters during periods like this. It will be interesting to look back at this blog in one months time to see how this situation played itself out.* Here we are now in July, some three months out. So what happened?
The stock did find a support level. It's still to difficult to play. What is missing is that there are no spikes of upward volume coming into it. Without that happening this stock could dip further.

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