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Caterpillar - Catching A Reversal On A Tuesday

Tuesdays are not the best of days to look for reversals however Caterpillar jumped a modest amount which impacted the value of this series of Puts. This is a 1:36 p.m. readout. Here is it's five day chart. Now its one day chart. It would seem like kind of a random thing to do and why fight a strong stock? One reason is that the markets are only mildly up and could give back some of it's gains before the end of the day. Caterpillar could be gaining strenght based on last weeks articles talking about how Caterpillar could potential gain from this new AI movement. Notice that the five day chart is in an uptrend and notice the small open interest numbers in the Puts. No one wants to hold Puts on Caterpillar when it is in this uptrend. Could it has a soft selloff in the next two hours? Here it is now 50 minutes later. The "bid and ask" are almost unchanged. There is also not much change in the DJIA index.Now this. The DJIA is sellig off and Caterpillar is hanging ...
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A Follow Up To A Recent Blog I Did About Playing Two Week Options

Let's begin by saying I am not a big fan of buying "two-week-out" options. Yes they cost a touch more than "one-week-out" options however that is not the reason why. I like thirty day out options and one year out options and Monday, Wednesday and Friday "one- day-options" better. So what's the matter with "two-week-out" options? Here is my answer. Back on January 6th we looked at the Interactive Brokers Group 180 series of Calls that expire on January 17th. At that time they were trading at $4.90 a contract. Here is a look at that printout I posted.
Now this, a Friday January 10th printout. The DJIA closed down over six hundred points on the day.
So here we are at the end of the week and we have for lack of a better word, wasted four days or almost half the life of these options. But wait. Can you see how they where down 47.66% on the day? That means on the previous closing session they were trading at $6.25 per contract. (It's a brokerage company so it's obvious it's going to drop on a day the market has a big sell off). Now a look at it's five day chart.
Imagine buying Puts on it on the morning rally on Tuesday morning and getting out at a huge profit minutes later at about 10:30 a.m. If you follow the charts wouldn't you recognize that could happen? If you answer yes then why do you need to clutter up your mind with "two-week-out" options. I say this because I feel more secure playing five, three or one day options than I do playing "two-week-out-options". Yet that's only me. ** Yes there was a decent profit to be had on the "two-week-out" options preceding Fridays precipice slide but that's another part on the "two-week-out" option holding syndrome. The urgency to take profits isn't there compared to playing shorter term options. ** How did these 185 Calls end up trading on January 17th?
Bottom line. The options on this stock are more interesting than most.

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