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A Jumpy Week For Caterpillar - A Week With Earning Reports

Here is Thursday's trading on the day on Caterpillar. Here is how the $417.50 calls that expire tomorrow closed the day. Something happened this week. Caterpillar had a quarterly earning report come out on Tuesday. It's stock trading action survived this news unscathed. Here is it's five day chart as of the end of Thursday. Maybe the 420.00 or the 422.50 series Calls are better to look at? Here they are. But wait. Deere got clobbered today on the release of a quarterly earning's report. Why didn't Caterpillar sell off in price in sympathy? It shoud have. Deere sold off $34.70. For this reason alone I would be more inclined to purshase the Puts. Here is the series I would consider. To be continued.
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Deere. One Issue With Thinly Traded Call Options On Stocks In The $450.00 Price Range That Expire in Four Days

It's chart. It's Tuesday morning and the stock Deere has being going sideways for a few trading sessions.
Let's now focus on the "bid and ask". Look at the spread and think back to the "bid-and-ask" on the stock Walmart I wrote about yesterday. The spread (the "bid and ask") on options on Walmart yesterday was like two pennies ( "bid $1.04-ask $1.06") at 10:09 a.m. which can be a very turbulent period of time.
It's late in the morning trading session well past the first hour of morning jitters. If you want to buy in on Deere Calls what would you be willing offer? $3.50.? That's only a guess. If you want to sell what would be the suggested selling price? This wide spread (a spread of $3.26 dollars) is a total turnoff. Now this. A look at the trading action near the end of the day on this same options postion. Here are it's one day and five day charts. The markets are off and the stock Deere now is up.
Now the same 440 series of Deere Call options at 3:49:00 p.m.
One final conclusion which can only be verified by repeated observations. We are afterall not not privy to how logarithms work. When you see the spread on Call options increase to preposterous proportions on stocks in the $450.00 price range with four days left to go before expiring you can be assured that there is some kind of action happening in the background causing a push to go up.

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