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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 - It's First Quarter Earnings Report

Boeing rallied yesterday on the release of it's earnings report only then to tank. Caterpillar is tanking this morning in the premarkets. Let's begin with it's 5 day and 30 day chart.
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The world needs to be rebuilt and Caterpillar is there to help. It's growing, it's got a good reputation, it's not laying off employees and it's doing just fine. If it misses a beat on it's earnings report so what? Life goes on. Then there are those pesky analyst who are known to offer a convoluted spin on things. If you like Caterpillar just buy it on the dips and put it away. So the markets will be opening on the commentary by the companies C.E.O of "sales about flat". Phrasing it that way is a recipe for short term disaster.
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The two printouts above show some of the early morning action in one Put series and in One Call series. What happened the next day? A slight rebound with next to no traders trying to capitalize on a rebound. What does this tell us? It tells us option traders in general stay away from trading the "release of earning reports" on Caterpillar.
Now the one week out Call options.
Low open interest, a low volume of trading and relatively big pricings considering the these are only slightly "in-the-money" Calls which might take a few seeks to gain value. The bottom line is that this stock really got beat up and going forward it's going to be again upward journey. It helps that they are buying back their own shares. ** Now a look at how Caterpillar traded at the close on Monday April 29th.
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The volume of Calls traded is very light. That's suprising.

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