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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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Walmart. Does Five Days Buy You Enough Time?

Let's set the stage.
A five day chart and the current bid and ask on an "in-the-money" Call option by $.31 cents.
Notice the tight bid and ask. That's a good thing. Now this morning's early trading.
Light open interest in this series and light to moderate morning trading in these series on the opening. Would I want to hold onto a position like this for the entire week? It's kind of dangerous because at any moment an analysis could come out with a comment about "Christmas Retail Sales". It's something I would get into with the hopes of getting out of on the day. Imagine, people living south of the border that can find brokerages that don't charge fees on trading. In that environment nimble option traders can have a heyday playing options like this with a tight "bid-and-ask". Let's watch this one for a day and see what happens. Now this.
Thirty nine minutes later the stock is up twenty-two cents. What's nice about five day options is that time is not as much of a factor compared to trading options with only, one, two or three days of life left in them. Here we are now at 11:50 a.m. Call me chicken. I would get out. It's 11:50 a.m. It was a good ride with no hiccups. It doesn't always happen that way. Take a profit and run.
The end. Well not really the end. Here is how these Call options closed the day.They did actually hit a high or $2.02.00.

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