Profit Update - CL
Profit Update - Colgate Palmolive (CL) Hello Smart Option Sellers! We placed a buy-back order yesterday to take profits on our CL put-sell position. Unfortunately, only a handful of trades went across the tape at our price of $.05 per contract. The reason being - the stock started to sell off as soon as I started writing up the alert, and continued lower for the rest of the day. This kept the put option price elevated, thus, most of you were not filled. Although I can mark it as closed and filled, I will hold off for now until we get more of you involved. So for now, continue to work the buy-back trade "GTC" for $.05 per contract. As far as news headlines go - we have the Fed interest rate decision today at 2pm EST in which the most likely outcome is that they will remain where they are. We also have President Trump's decision by December 15 on whether he will go ahead with the next round of tariffs on China. He's very predictable though - when the stock market is near its highs, he talks tough on China. But when the market starts selling off, he puts out announcements that the tariffs are on hold. This leads to lots of swings in the market. He knows his best asset is a strong stock market, so he would never jeopardize that. He does this by putting out very timely tweets to help sway the market. I'm quite sure we'll see an announcement in the next few days that the tariffs have once again been put on hold because of "constructive talks with China". In the meantime, we bide our time with our current positions. Tomorrow after the close we'll have an earnings announcement from Oracle (ORCL), in which we have a put-sell position. So let's see how that goes. And speaking of earnings, we had this question come in: Q: Hi Lee,
LULU will be reporting earnings after the market closes tomorrow, 12/11. I noticed the Implied Volatility on the 13December19 weekly options has kicked up to 94%, nearly twice the other LULU weekly and monthly options. Can you explain why this has happened and what this means if we’re thinking about putting on an earnings trade for LULU?
A: Earnings always drive up the volatility on the nearest-expiring options because those are the cheapest on a dollar basis and the most popular for speculators to trade. Since no one knows how the stock is going to react, the option market-makers (who trade the most volume) need to protect themselves from adverse moves, so they will bump up the price of all options contracts, which inflate the implied volatility of the options. This is most pronounced in the nearest-expiring options, as you've noted. Once the earnings are released and the outcome is known, you will see the implied volatility and the option prices collapse on themselves, regardless of which way the stock moves. It's a very unique, yet well-known and common occurrence. If you're going to play an earnings move on a stock like LULU, be prepared for an almost "all-or-none" type of outcome. If you buy strangles, a very large move is needed. If you sell options, you will get good money upfront, but you better hope for a non-event where the stock goes nowhere. The good thing is - you will know very quickly whether you'll win or lose. Good luck! That's all for now. Continue to hold all other open positions as-is. Contact us here with fills, comments, questions or concerns. Regards,
Lee Let's Grab That Cash!
