Featured

Living on Kraft Dinner?

What does the word disconnect mean? As a verb it means "to sever or interrupt the connection of or between; detach". Option trading - one day options - is a disconnect from the world. What happens to slightly "out-of-the-money" Call options on Costco when the stock shoot up thirty dollars on the day? I will show you what happened on Friday to Costco Calls and the options on a few other stocks I frequently watch. What a disconnect from the real world. But before that a look at how the indexes traded. 1) Costco. It's five day chart and a look at how three of it's option series moved upwards in one day. You may not know how to read these printouts but try to read the highs and lows on these option pricings. One printout shows an "at-the-money" option which means you are buying a contract on the stock, good for one day only at a locked in price equal to (or very close to) what the stock is currently trading at. The other two contracts shown are ...
Post a Comment

Turn Around Situations On A Tuesday

First of all I don't really like playing one week options on stocks on a Tuesday. I would rather wait until Wednesday and look for a mid-week reset in the markets. That said, Walmart's one hour sell off on a Tuesday morning kind of tweaked my interest. Let's follow this together a see what happens.
One observation. Look at the volume of trading in the lowest series of call, the 90 series. They are the ones to stand to gain the most in any mini-short-term uptick. Yet then again, maybe the stock will continue to go lower. Here is it's five day chart as of seventeen minutes earlier.
Now the indexes.
Now a few minutes later at 11:02 a.m.
Now the same three series of Call options starting with the lowest striking priced options and the ones with the lowest trading volume.
A bid of $1.01-$1.08 has now jumped to $1.22 to $1.29. Doing the math on the higher two series offers equally as impressive gains.
Purchasing on contracts sizes of 10 or 20 could eke out small gains. This kind of stuff goes on all the time. The danger of this is of course that this rebound could quickly "Peter out". I would rather do it on a Wednesday to try and catch a mid week turnaround rally. I will show you the end of day closing readouts later. The action at 3:00 p.m..
At this point in time I would get out and just call it a day.
Notice now the sideward trend kicking into the afternoon trading. Short term option traders need not play these choppy sideways markets. Proof of this is shown in these following three readings.
Notice the wide "bid" and "ask" in the 90 series of Calls at the close?. Why is this? Well the option makers are giving themselves protection from what the morning opening bell might bring. Who needs to be part of this indecisiveness? The next two series of options also closed weak.
Who wants to be a daytrader? The DJIA closed down the day 178 points.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fireside Chat - One Year Options and Thirty Day Options. Which is Better?

Image
Some say to think small, not big. Trying to play Disney options is thinking big. It is a stock slighty out of favor. If we start with it's a three year chart, we will see it is down by about 50% over that period of time. Now it's one year chart. If the stock can break 110 in early 2024 the sky is the limit. It does have a lot of moving parts so anything could happen. Look at these Calls options one year out. One year in options buys a lot of time.They look reasonable. If the stock ever inched up to the $105.00 price level in the three or four months these options would jump up in price by about 50%. Even more if they had really good news. Yet it's the "what-if" aspect of the equation that castes such a trade in doubt. "What if" stories just don't cut it. There are to many variables in play. Then again, why are we even thinking of long-term Call options after a December's rally? Let's switch gears. If consumers are out spending for X-mas...
Read more

Trump Media Technology Options With Three Days To Go.

Image
On Tuesday just after 3:00 p.m the Trump Media Technology Options had stop traded again. What is the next 24 hours going to bring? Who knows. So many option traders follow this stock and most are afraid to buy either Call or Put Options on it because their premiums are so expensive. If Trumph wins the stock should soar and if he loses the stock will tank. The option premiums are priced expensively in both directions. Here now is how both the Calls and Puts traded on the opening today. First the Calls six minutes into the opening. Now the Puts. Now a look at how these options played the day. With a "stop trading" situation the option session ended a little bit early as evidenced in these following readings. Notice also how low the open interest number is in these Puts. Option traders for the most part opted to stay away from this situation. Now this. Trump wins. Here is how the 38 series of Calls traded just after the opening at 10:11 a.m.. The stock is up however the...
Read more

Another Earnings Report - "Roku" - Thursdays and Friday Trading.

Image
Please read this Roku "earnings report" blog. Roku was down fifteen dollars in the first hour of trading today after the release of it's third quarter earnings report. Here is a 10:52 a.m. look at one series of Puts that doubled in price on the opening as a result of this sell off. In my last blog on Caterpillar I talked about points of inflection where stocks rebound after bad news. This time an inflection point may not be in the cards. Caterpillars earning were just shy of expections but nothing had really changed. The world still needs their products and they are still a dominant player in their industry. Roku is a different animal. Their subscribers are a fickle bunch. Companies like Roku and Netflix go up and down all the time. Roku now is just back to a level at which it was trading at earlier this year. I don't know how to interpret their financial statements. Things still look pretty good for them to me. Once again here is a look at the increase in the value...
Read more