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Showing posts from April, 2025

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Finding A Trade To Make On Thursdays. "Walmart"

I don't like Thursday afternoons in short term option trading. A lot of things seem to happen on Thursdays like government reports coming out. I don't buy in the final seconds of trading, Call options on Boeing, Caterpillar or Eli Lilly or hoping for a Friday morning bounce. The hope today is to do find something good to trade and walk away by early afternoon. Welcome to Walmart. Options on Walmart are tight. Other stocks like McDonalds have options which trade sloppily. Let me show you what I mean by this. Good luck trying to get a fair fill if you're buying or selling. Now the Walmart side of the story on how options trade on it. Can you see the tighter bid and ask and the higher volume of trading? Step back for a second and consider this. The stock is only up $.26 cents in the first 45 minutes of trading. What does that tell us? It's waiting to decide which way it wants to go. Now this. These Call options went on to move up to $1.71 just before noon. There was the...

Waste Management Again

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Last Friday I did a blog on Waste Managemnet showing how it closed strong on the day. I showed how it's Call options also got dragged up and my point was that two week out options are sometimes a sweet spot in the market. Here was it's one day trading chart on Friday. So this morning, a Monday morning I checked it out once again. Here is how it was trading. Now let's skip ahead to the end of the day. Here is how the same Calls are trading. So in two trading sessions they went from a low of $3.43 up to $5.60 with no thoughts about "time-value" working against you. Here now is it's five day chart. Option trading doesn't always have to be about making "all or nothing" trades. *** Earnings came out. This is a good example of pre-earning option trading. Here is how they closed the day. ** Look at the hit it took on the splke down when it's earnings were released. Someone was waiting for that to happen. Now the stock will be going into neut...

McDonalds Again And A Follow Up To Yesterday's Blog.. A Continuation of The Look At One Day Options

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Option traders on Friday mornings just want to be in and out in the first hour or so of trading on short term options. In the second half of the day most of the action calms down. McDonalds sold off a little bit yesterday afternoon and firmed up a bit towards the closing. Could this "mostly downward trend" continue? Here is a partial look at some of the opening bell's activity. Today is a Friday however let us first look at how the stock traded yesterday. Now a look at it's trading pattern at 9:32.22 a.m. The McDonald stock jumped up $4.98 and the 317.50 Puts we followed all day yesterday which are now "out-of-the-money" acted accordingly. They shrunk in value. During the fist 2.22 minutes of trading they traded down to 34 dollars a contract. Now this. In the first three minutes of trading the stock jumped a bit and then started to come off a touch. These Call options where not attacting all that much attention. The bid and ask jumped up on little volu...

McDonald's. It's Difficult To Fight Strong Stocks.

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Here is McDonalds five day chart at the close on Wednesday. Now here is it's three month chart. Now consider this. In two days the stock is up about twelve dollars. I often talk about Wednesdays being the one day in the week the markets can do reverals. Today the DJIA was up over four hundred points and McDonalds was down 60 cents. It dipped on the opening and came back a bit and then selling pressure came into the stock again on the closing. I personally hate McDonald's food. The internet has tens of Youtube videos saying their fries are poisonous. Yet I get it. But think about this. Whenever a new residential subdivision goes in anywhere in North America there is room for another one of their restaurants to go in. They just pop up and everyone knows what they are. Here now is a snippet I posted in a past McDonald's blog. After a lackluster trading session today McDonald's could drop in the next two days or at least on a Thursday afternoon sell off. Yet nothing m...

Another Blog On "Vinfast"

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There is so much to read about this companies history online. Do your own homework. Their success is not dependent on what ends up happening with their sales in North America. They are nimble. There are plenty of auto factories all over the world now for sale they can acquire. They have dabbled in Australia. Having access to money to keep going doesn't seem to be their problem. Rivian also seems to enjoy this advantage. Vinfast is currently building a new plant in India which could employ thousands of people. That's an emerging new market. New relationships are being built and new investors will be coming onboard. Are option players looking at this stock? Not really if we look at these "one-month-out" Calls. What about Calls further out? What about next January? Here is a look at the three and four series of Calls. Nobody seems willing to bet Vinfast Calls. Now this. Here are two snippets taken from a blog I wrote about this stock back in early December of 2024. ...