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Suicide Options

Do you want to split hairs, meaning do you want to chase the most miniscule of moves in a stock's price? With the way options are structured on Pfizer you can. Look at this five day chart on Pfizer and look at this particular Call option series. These are the 24 series of Calls that expire this Friday. Why do I think these Calls offer good value? Two reasons, the first being that this stock trades on high volumes. As as of 3:50 p.m. today the stock has traded in excess of 39.6 million shares. I take comfort in this number. With this much volume I would think that the option makers would have less power and less desire to control any short term directional moves that this stock has. The second reason I like these options is that they trade in one dollar increments. I like that. In my blogs about Walmart I mention the same thing. In this case we now have a "Bid" of .22 and an "Ask" .25 with a high on the day of .42. Purchase these options in quanties of 20, 30, ...

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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