CAT Puts

Caterpillar's earnings report. What I see is 4th quarter sales up 23%. Strong 4th quarter earnings of $3.71 per share.That's a solid number. Just think, the supply chain issue isn't being used as a mistake. Now look at the the opening options market. The stock is down on the news. Management made a few remarks about near term headwinds. They do that sometimes to temper growth expectations. These two quotes are the 205 Call series which expire today. One is at 9:44 a.m. and one is at 10:03 a.m.. They would be very dangerous to consider purchasing since its very unlikely that they could ever shake off this downward spike so early in the morning. So now what? It's at this time in the morning when the decision to reacte to this bad news gets tricky. The stock is down like ten dollars and the DJI is having a good day. There is a strong tempation to jump in on the upside hoping for a quick reversal. That's one of the things that makes option trading so difficult. One...

Ok, so yesterday, a Thursday I looked at Ford because management was in the news saying they are going to stop taking more preorders on their upcoming F150 electric truck. They have too many orders. They were also saying look out world - we are going electric. V.W. and Toyota were also making similiar claims. Here is a look at Ford at 12:11 p.m. today. At noon Ford was up 5.6% and their short term options which expire today were up ten fold. Stocks the size of Ford seldom jump that much in one morning. Why didn't lightbulbs go off in my head yesterday saying lets take a flyer on Ford Call options for tomorrow with one day's trading life left in them? That would be the Dec 10th 20 Calls. As you can see, the 20 Calls this morning went from .06 or six dollars a contract to .61 or sixty one dollars a contract at noon! Then looked at how they ended up the day. A .06 or six dollar contract would be worth one hundred and forty three dollars! A six hundred dollar investment would be ...

Ford is going electric, that's the buzz. We all know the story. Earnings just came out on the stock and the Call options jumped on the opening. If you were playing options you had to get out just after the opening. With option plays on earning reports that's usually the way to best way play them. First, I will show the prior day's action. There was a gap down on the opening and 94 million shares traded. That's a large number. People were cashing out after recent good times. Now here is a chart of Ford the next day and here is how two option series traded. Buy in at the close and sell out just after the opening. Look at how high each series traded up to just after the opening. The earning numbers were not all that great but it's the buzz about going electric. Ford is one of the better stocks out there to play earning report releases. ** Scroll up to the upper left and read my most recent blog on MacDonald's earning report.

I was sitting in the drive through line yesterday at McDonalds redeeming a free coffee sticker won from being there a few days prior. It was a long line up for mid-afternoon. I am not a fast food junkie. I found myself thinking of how the Domino Pizza stock was on a terror for much of last year but not so much now. When we were all locked in last year everyone was ordering their pizza. I was also wondered if they would now accept my little free coffee sticker as it was only thumbnail size. Then when I pulled up to the drive thru window I hit a patch of bees. Apparently for whatever reason they were enjoying being at that window. They gave me my free coffee. Boy it was busy there. I note in this option series that there were only 292 open contracts. That small number suprises me. Why didn't more option players see this coming?

Did you read the fine print of my Sept. 27th blog about Zen Graphene Solutions? A newish company making claims to be able to crank up production to fill the demands of a new ingredent used in the production of Covid masks. Click around the internet and find out the number of employees they have. Not many. Their new partner is not a listed company. Why are they talking about an estimated capacity to coat the equivant of 800 million masks per month? That many, really? In a similiar sort of way, in my Sept. 16th blog I talked about Limestone Boats and their claims to be able to crank out 550 boats next year. A picture in that blog shows their first two boats being shipped out for motors and sea testing. Without a track record of making boats this year how can they justify such a number? Then there is Odd Burger. I talked about this stock on September 6th with plans to open 20 restaurants next year. How did they pick the number twenty? Why not ten? How do you plan for twenty when you curre...

There is news! The stock is jumping. Look at todays volume of trading as of 2:00 p.m. The average daily volume is around 59 million shares. What a vote of confidence! Anyone holding Ford Call options has been rewarded. Is it clear sailing going forward? It should be for the next few months as Ford revels in this glory. But wait, is this all talk and no action. How long will it take to build these new facitities and what will the E.V. marketplace look like three or four years do the road? This good news report may turn sour quickly as Ford is losing money on on each electric vehicle they sell. That's the problem built into this situation. In the short and mid term, things do not look good. Stay away or buy Puts.

Why am I stuck in the mud watching Ford when there are hundreds of more exciting stocks to watch? That's a good question. The answer I guess has something to do with the concept of leverage and how options on stocks in the five to fifteen dollar price range can sometimes have explosive moves based on percentage increases in short periods of time. Look at this week's chart of Ford and look at the opportunities it provided option playes. So the question then becomes how is it possible to anticipate these moves? Well the first big move upwards on the far left hand side of the chart was an earnings release explosion. The following chart better shows how the stock traded in the few days leading up to the release of this news. That was an instant double if you were paying the short term Calls. In at 3:58 p.m. on the previous trading day and out at 9:34:00 a.m. on the following morning. Trying to anticipate earning reports is tricky. With Ford there were reports of chip shortages...

So tomorrow is the big day when Caterpillar releases it's second quarter earnings report. It is expected to be good. Boeing just had a great earnings report yesterday and analyst are expecting Caterpillar to also report decent numbers. Let's look at the five day trading charts on these two companies and this mornings super strong premarket indicators. (It's always good to be selling into strong premarket indicators because history tells us that they never stay strong forever). It's July 29th and Caterpillar's earning report is tomorrow. Ford also just had their earning reports and good new also on that front. So far so good? Good news everywhere right? It's only good news if you can capitalize on it. What am I implying? Well I don't want to digress to far off topic however option trading can be an exacerbating experience. I missed the Boeing and Ford trading opportunites despite the fact that I anticipated both of these two companies would do well. Do I...

It's not that complicated however it kind of slipped under the radar. It was a big name company we all know called Lowes. The payoff was wild. What are we looking at? Options that closed on Thursday at ten cents a contract and opened at one cent the folling morning, a Friday which then then hit an interday high of one dollar and fifty cents. A one thousand dollar investment would have went as high as $150,000.00. Folks, all of this is legal and anyone can play it. You could have made it all by lunchtime. What happened? Well we are talking about the 200 series on Calls that expired yesterday on Friday July 23th. At the start of the trding session they were over $3.00 "out-of-the money. Very few traders saw value in them. Yet Lowes did close strong on Thursday the day before it. Then it wobbled a touch on the Friday opening and resumed it's upward charge. The price of lumber is dropping and many people are waiting to purchase lumber at these new lowering prices. The kicker ...