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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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Snowflake and Charts

What the heck do I know about Snowflake? Not much. I know it's symbol. I have Snowflake and First Solar Inc. next to each other on one of the screens I watch and all I know is that their options are volatile. Today is Wednesday Dec 11th.
.....
If the stock was worth $185.00 two days ago why is it only worth $171.00 today? Should I scurry around looking for recent news to help figure out why it is down? At ten a.m. this morning the stock is relatively flat. What does that tell me? It tells me that traders are reassessing the causes of the damage that was done. At the same time I am mystified by the recent spikes in Boeing, Tesla and Rivian. Yet than again there are plausable reasons why those stocks are going up. Rivian is getting money, Tesla has a million things happening.... Which brings me back to Snowflake and First Solar Inc. Their stories don't get quite the same amount of attention. Here is how the 172.50 Calls are trading at 10:05 a.m.
Times change.
It is now 10:33 a.m. and look at those same options.
Ten a.m. on Wednesday morning are good times to be looking for stuff like this. A 12:24 p.m. update.
Picking a time to get out is the difficult part. Now nine minutes later.
What ended up happening on the day? First the one day chart.
Now for this suprise.
There was lots of warning in the mid afternoon that things were starting to change. Wednesdays are great days in the week for action like this. ** How did First Solar trade?
It's five day chart is kind of a flip of a coin.
These Calls are actually pretty cheap given that they are "in-the-money". Here now is it's one day chart.
My thoughts as I have said before is that buying Calls on a Thursday morning that expire the next day is a bit of a trap. Time value quickly can work against you. Wednesday options do not seem to have this worry.

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