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How To Avoid Time Value Traps With Last Week Options.

This blog is not going to be an exhausting study of this topic. I just want to show you a few charts found in recent blogs and comment on which ones seem to skirt the issue of "time-value-concerns' and which ones don't. 1) Avoid Thursday at the close Call options. In this case Thursday is the second last day of the above chart. If you guess the wrong direction on the close it's going to be game over on Friday when the options expire. Thursday at the close on options that expire the next day are the biggest time value traps you can buy into. If the stock moves in the wrong direction it's game over. 2) Ford on a Monday going into Tuesday. On this chart April 13th is a Monday and Tuesday is the 14th. Can you see Ford closing strong on the close of the 13th? It would make sense to get in on the stong closing because these Calls would still have four trading days to recover if Tuesdays opening was not all that spectacular. 3) This time it's Caterpillar and it...
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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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