Options Premium Archives - All Star Charts

[Options Premium] Monthly Options Conference Call Slides

June 9, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

Due to technical and logistical timezone difficulties with JC traveling in Europe, we are unable to have our usual monthly conference call to run through the broad themes JC is seeing from his unique technical perspectives as well as our usual review of open positions that need action taken ahead of the upcoming expiration.

But have no fear — we got you!

All Options Premium subscribers will also be invited to attend the next All Star Charts conference call so you can get caught up on the bigger picture in the markets. This Call will be held on Wednesday June 19th at 7PM ET. [Read more…]

[Options Premium] Getting Interactive

June 7, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

We’re looking for a “free ride” higher in a media/internet stock that looks set to break out.

[Read more…]

[Options Premium] Relative Strength in a Sector Ready to Bounce

June 5, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

The markets are engaging in some sideways chop thanks to whatever headlines we’re ignoring. Meanwhile, there are some oversold sectors showing signs of some mean-reversion. And within one of those sectors, we’ve got a stock setting up with a pretty straight forward reward-to-risk opportunity.

[Read more…]

[Options Premium] Positions Review Headed into June Expiration

May 30, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

As we head into June Expiration, there are a number of open positions with options expiring in June that may need some attention. Generally speaking as we approach any expiration, it is a Best Practice to begin aggressively weeding out or rolling out positions that aren’t working. Why? For long premium plays, unless positions are comfortably in-the-money, theta decay will begin to accelerate and whatever premium is left in our options will quickly disappear. For short premium plays where we haven’t yet reached our profit target, gamma becomes our enemy making our position more sensitive to fluctuations of the underlying. A small winner/loser could quickly get away from us. Best to roll it out to the next monthly expiration cycle to buy ourselves more time, or close it down and look for newer/better opportunities.

In no particular order, here are some currently open positions with June options that we’ll be looking to take action on next week: [Read more…]

[Options Premium] The Guiding Hand

May 28, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

We’re tracking a household name that — with the exception of four wild days during the Christmas nadir — has been riding it’s 200-day moving average quietly higher and is setting up for what could be a big move. [Read more…]

[Options Premium] Long Play Short Leash

May 24, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

When you’re bullish on a name and options prices — in terms of volatility — are the cheapest they’ve been all year, the prudent move is often the simplest move: buy longer-dated calls. And the decision is even simpler when you have a clearly defined level to show you where the trade idea is busted. [Read more…]

[Options Premium] Riding the Diagonal Track

May 22, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

In a recent report, the All Star Charts team highlighted some mixed signals and the lack of trend in many areas of the stock market right now. These are often frustrating situations for straight stocks players. Luckily for us options traders, we can craft strategies that best suit any market environment we may be in. For today’s play, we’re going to get a little creative, mixing a credit spread with a calendar spread to establish a unique risk profile in a name that we’re cautiously bullish on. [Read more…]

[Options Premium] Base Tractor

May 20, 2019 by Sean McLaughlin

In a recent blog post, All Star Charts highlighted a stock retesting a breakout from a very large base. This was the money quote:

First off, big bases take time to form because they are caused by steady institutional accumulation. Mom and pop investors aren’t the ones creating this trend, so I know that there’s underlying demand that will support prices if they do move lower.

Because prices have memory and the base has taken a significant period of time to build, there’s likely been more trading at each price level along the way. As a result of this institutional support, the rate of change to the downside is likely to be less severe versus a name that’s advanced quickly to the upside with less trading activity at each level, and thus less memory among market participants to defend these levels on the way down.

Secondly, our risk is extremely well-defined when trading these patterns. In the event that we are buying a base breakout (or pullback), we know exactly where we are wrong and can generally minimize our risk relative to potential reward.

This is precisely the scenario we see unfolding in Tractor Supply Co $TSCO. [Read more…]