Posts

Showing posts from April, 2025

Featured

Late To The Party Option Players - Disney

Can late to the party option traders make money? It's something to consider? These Call options expire this Friday. There was news on it before the opening today. The second chart below a few minutes later shows it hanging tough. At 10:01 a.m. we now checking out the Puts. The bid and ask on the Puts are very tight. That also makes us ask what happened to the Disney 101 Calls that we first looked at? Here is what the chart now looks like. More Call option players have jumped in to play the upside that the downside. Might one do a spread and try to play it both ways hoping for a breakout either way? That's an option to consider. Disney has being a dog of a stock now for a year so might some profit taking set in? How is Disney going to pay for another theme park? With that on their plates forget any share buy back programs. They are taking on new risks in a period of global uncertainity. Are late to the party option traders best just to stay away from this unexpected situ...

Trump Says "We Will Be Off To The Races When China Calls".

Image
First Solar tanked on the opening (a Wednesday) on news of an economic slow down and Trump talk. At 9:43a.m. the D.J.A.I is down 630 points. First Solar took a hit. Now this about ten minutes later. The stock has stabilized. Volume on the Call side is increasing. One trade at $2.86 and the spread between the "bid and ask" actually widening. It's the catching the falling knife syndrome. Now this. The DJAI keeps going down. Twelve minutes later strenght has come into these Call options. The spread between the "bid and ask" remains crazy high. The stock has stopped falling. Where are these options going to be in ten minutes time which will be 10:20 a.m. Can you see how nerve racking playing this sell off is? The "bid and ask" are now tigher. Normalcy is returning. Or is it? Now a recap. $2.99 at 9:48:00 a.m.,$4.00 at 10:00 a.m. and $5.40 at 10:10 a.m. Only 29 contracts traded during this time period which tells us that option traders are not con...

Waste Management Again

Image
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...

Day Trading One Month Out Options. Learning To Skim The Tiniest Of Moves

Image
This blog is different. It's about skimming small profits on one type of option in particular. It's also my story about how to make the time value of "one-month-out" options your very best friend. What I am about to try to describe to you is a phenomenon of wrongly calculated time values built into option pricings. Wrongly calculated from the perspective that some option prices (their "bids and asks") are over-sensitive to the tiniest of pricing swings. Who am I to make claims like this? What credentials do I bring to the table? I don't want to tell you as I want to keep my identity a secret. Let's just say that I have being trading options for a long time. Over the years I have learned that "nine month" or "one year out" Call options or Put options on stock's in the ten dollar price range are often mispriced. As example, I have followed the stock "Ford" for like forty years and to me it's January Call options a...

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

Image
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.

Image
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...