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Put Options On The High Flying Stock "Sandisk" Are Difficult To Play

I have ignored this stock all year, not knowing much about it. The stock is Sandisk and it doesn't pay a dividend. Sometimes I think that the stock has gone up to much in price to quickly. Is trying to play it for the downside with one week Put options the way to go? Why try and play Puts on a stock that never seems to go down? Why not just ride the Calls up? The stock is up $52.00 on the day. At noon on a Monday here is what one series of it's "just-in-the-money" Puts look like. Do these premiums seem to be abnormally high? Yes. $59.00 dollars means $5,900.00 dollars per contract. If you are new to option trading stay away from these ones. Other stocks trading in this price range like Costco have options on them trading at much lower prices. Here is an example of what I am talking about. If we look back at a blog I did last week on Caterpillar you will see how much of the time premuim built into the pricing on these "one-week-to-expiring-options" decreas...
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The Power Of "One-Month-Out-Options" For Short Term Gains.

It helps when the markets rally on a Monday but that's a secondary issue.
This blog is about stocks in the seventy dollar price range with options on them staggered in thirty day intervals. Is trading in options which trade in only in thirty day intervals better than options on stocks in the same price range that expire every Friday? My experience is that options on stocks that trade every thirty days tend to attract less interest which in turn means that they are less susceptible to "market-maker" manipulations. Yet this isn't really a point I want to debate. Now this, a look at the seventy series of Calls on "Carmax" at the end of the trading session today.
Bid 5:70 ask 5:90. Only two options traded on the day. Let's now look at it's five day chart.
So it jumped a touch but nothing to crazy. Now this, I did a blog last Friday, my previous blog where I showed what the same options were trading at on that day. Here is the printout I want to show.
A 10:39 a.m. readout on Friday morning showing only three option contracts traded with a last trading price traded of $4.07. Is there a lesson here to be gained? Yes, thinly traded "one-month-out" options can be successfully traded. What appreciations are there to be gained? Well there is less market maker manipulations. When you put in a closing sell ticket for only one, two or three contract and if the trend of the stock is upwards you will get a fill without going through the game of watching option makers wiggle the "bid-and-ask" in their favour. One month out options, played correctly are also less stressful to hold because the premiums built into an options price for it's time value will not disappear as quickly as the premiums built into one week out options. That's just the way I see it.

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