Here is how the stock traded on a Thursday.There was nothing unusual about the day.
I am suprised they would dump this news on the market going into a Friday trading session. It messes up option traders. Doing this type of an announcement on a Tuesday prior to the markets opening would be a less disruptive day to do this. Here is the news.
In a way this wasn't totally unexpected news. As they said, there were several other recent updates on this issue. Auto companies in their recent quarterly reports were also harping on this issue. Look at how it dropped in price in the "after-market" trading.
Now here is how one series of Puts closed the day. No one could trade them as the market opened lower. Look at how this news totally caught the markets by suprise.
The secrecy of this news is a credit to Caterpillar. If Caterpillar had this news are Deere Call holders going to get worried? Here is what happened on Friday morning.
Now Deere, which is now also trying to shake off this bad news. These two stocks tend to trade in similiar ways.
Here are the 435 Puts on Caterpillar at 9:35 a.m.
There is no real volume on them. Everyone was caught by suprise. It will be interesting to see if other companies start to make announcements like this? Is this a precursor to more bad news? Now some more late morning action. A second shoe has fallen.
It keeps falling. When can you start thinking about buying the Calls? Here are the one day Calls at 1:03 p.m. followed by what they ended up closing at the end of the day. Why even try to sneak in this kind of a trade? THE TIMING IS TO DIFFICULT.
After the $1.09 mark just after 1:00 p.m. they slipped down to $.45 but it was difficult to pinpoint a time when the stock would reverse. Next weeks Call options became a safer consideration. Here is a look at the Cat Calls one week out at 12:26 p.m. and at the end of the day. The question at 1:06 p.m was the question of whether or not it's to early to be thinking about a market reversal? At that time that was the million dollar question.
Here is how they closed the day.
Monday brings more bad news.
Now this, ten minutes into the trading session. At 9:40 a.m. Cat is down $8.38 and at 9:41 it's down $6.91. Here are two different series of Calls now not attracting any attention. The 405 series of Calls which are "in-the-money" might appear to be super expensive however they would be the ones most likely to benefit from a upward rebound.
Now this at 10:07 a.m.
$2.30 was the opening number in this morning reversal.
The 417.50 Calls did pop upwards on Friday morning to help make for a happy ending,
The 405 Calls also benefited.
The big suprise is how few players are now finding interest in playing Caterpillar options.
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