Asia is up with Sony flying ahead into next weeks earnings and the car companies moving nicely, there may be an opportunity to play TM or HMC this morning if they don’t gap up at the open. Europe is up across the board on a commodity recovery.
I don’t think today’s action will tell you anything other than people are playing with prices into options expiration. Google may have decimated the non-believers but I won’t be surprised if there is a concerted effort to hold it down (and, as below, I feel there are many reasons to) before 70,000 contracts (7M shares) finish in the money.
On the other hand, there may be a real shortage of shares to buy which can really rocket the stock.
The WSJ is front paging how EBay is in talks with Microsoft and Yahoo to take out Google. This is the kind of article that could have be written any time but they use them when they want to stop a runaway stock:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114558083975931981.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
As we expected metals are recovering already, I actually thought they would stay down through options expiration but this just shows you the strength of underlying demand.
Oil is down but you wouldn’t know it as we are now quoting June delivery so the price is now $73 per barrel but that’s down about .50 from yesterday. We don’t short oil on the weekend, especially with new supply threats from Nigeria.
Anything can happen today so don’t be greedy!
Good trading,
– Phil
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Here are some very dangerous day trades I am looking at with a goal of making 20% and a stop at 20%. Remember you need to exit asap as the premium will be destroyed by 1pm! And please, please, please do not chase…
All oils strictly following the Valero rule as long as oil stays over $73.
COP $70s for .45
NEM $55s for .85
ABX $30s for .15
Offering PLAY Jan $17.50s for $1.15 or less (not a day trade but get out at $1). I think they are just being punished by Apple for trying to sell tech to other companies and this will be resolved as their stuff is just better and if Apple doesn’t want it, Sony will.
http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2006/tc20060420_403611.htm
AAPL $67.50s for .60
GM $22.50 puts for .20
XOM $65s for .10 (total gamble)
CVX $60s for .35
QQQQ $42s for .60 (.10 premium – I think we’ll hit it!)
DIA $113s for .50
EBAY $37.50 for .10 (big gamble but fun)
MOT $22.50s for .20 (I should have done this when they dropped!)
MCD had the kind of earnings that look bad but are good as last year they had a huge tax gain that pumped up the numbers so the comparisons are all wrong. This is one to take advantage of but we can’t count on people being dumb so I’m going to buy a little (1/5x) May $35s for .90 and hope for a pullback so I can buy 4 more chunks during the day.
WM $45s for .10
BHP $45s for .20
AA $35s for .10
