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Chasing Unusual Charts. Pfizer

This stock had an unusual trading pattern last Friday. It is now Monday morning and this weeks option trading will be shortened by one day because of thanksgiving on Thursday. Here is the stock chart I am referring to. $24.50 to $25.50 in one day and now chilling at $25.00. It now has to move one way up or down. How do you decide which way? That's the issue. To buy both the Calls and the Puts means that you are going to get burnt one way. Here are the pricings on both the Puts and the Calls two minutes into the opening trading. The open interest in both the Calls and Puts is next to nothing. One thing is for certain. Traders are soon going to wake up to this action. The spread between the "bid and ask" on both series is $.05. That's not an issue. Lets check in at 9:58 a.m. to see what is happening with both the Calls and the Puts. .............. So what to do? Wait. It's now 10:47 a.m. It's now 11:00 a.m.. If we are going to make a stab at playing the d...
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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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