Wednesday’s Trade the Close session with the market hardly doing anything following the 0.5% rate cut by the FOMC left us wanting more in the way of order flow.
Boy how quickly things change — what a day!
Since the order flow was slow while the whales were figuring out exactly what the heck the play was following the first rate cut in four years, I went big in the best order that hit…
A very expensive play in Supermicro Computer (SMCI) that I bought a couple of contracts in and then added another after it dipped. But this morning… BANG!
SMCI was up 4% on the open, and those very risky weekly calls — don’t try this at home, kids! — I paid an average of $6.60 per contract nearly doubled up to $12.50!
You have to love it when a plan comes together because these could easily have gone to $0 if SMCI fell, or even just stayed flat this morning. And after being up 4%, as of 1 p.m. ET, the stock is basically flat, and those calls are way back down.
That’s why we love to sell the opening pop and take that money off the table.
We also covered SoFi (SOFI) in Wednesday’s edition of this newsletter, and it’s showing continued momentum today — up 3.7% as of 1:15 p.m. ET — after a flurry of buy signals hit both scanners this week.
In all, we saw four bullish orders in SOFI on the Penny Options Scanner (and several more last week), and a long-term play in the online bank that hit the News Flow Scanner.
That’s exactly the kind of action we look for when determining what plays may be worth a look!
But what about today?
Well, we just so happened to see a sizable order in a company reporting earnings after the close… FedEx (FDX). While it is a BIG order for a ticker we don’t see that often — about $670K in premium! — keep in mind that this is a $300 stock.
And that means these options will be pricey.
They also don’t expire until January, so it’s more of a long-term play, and they’re $45 out of the money, which does help a bit with the cost (looking at around $6.55 a contract).
We also saw a coupe of bullish orders in Citibank (C ) this afternoon, and a longer-dated short bets in Robinhood (HOOD) for some downside protection since everything’s up.
We’ve actually seen six short bets in HOOD — which is up over 11% the past week — the past couple of days totaling more than $1.3 million in premium.
As always, it could easily be downside protection (a couple of the orders are deep in the money) in case the stock starts to give back some of those big gains — HOOD is up 82% year to date.
As always, respect that risk and never trade more than you can afford to lose!
Order Flow:
*This is for informational and educational purposes only. These are not official alerts issued by Lance, but rather some interesting orders picked by the team at Lance Ippolito Trading.
There is inherent risk in trading. Trade at your own risk.
- FDX Jan25 Strike: 350 Calls premium: $669,750 ABOVE ASK BULLISH
Trade Date: September 19, 2024 Trade Time: 11:26 am - HOOD Jan25 Strike: 22 Puts premium: $394,055 ABOVE ASK BEARISH
Trade Date: September 19, 2024 Trade Time: 12:17 pm
Note: If no date is listed after the month, it’s the monthly expiration (third Friday).
The team at Lance Ippolito Trading
Lance doesn’t want the CCP spying on him, so you’ll never find him on TikTok. Same goes for other social media sites, which are filled with impersonators, scammers and crypto bros.
You can only find him on his personal YouTube Channel — smash that Subscribe button! https://www.youtube.com/@LanceIppolito
And in his private Telegram channel: https://t.me/+-gVwEIwGJhplMTgx
*This is for informational and educational purposes only. There is inherent risk in trading, so trade at your own risk.
P.S. A Massive Market Redirect Is Just Days Away
While everyone else is focused on the FOMC, elections and rising market volatility…
The control of a HUGE chunk of assets will be transferred — LEGALLY — on Sept. 20…
Historically speaking, these kinds of events only happen on 1.58% of trading days each year.
And when they do, they tend to cause abnormally large moves in under 72 hours…
Now, this has nothing to do with earnings, an indicator or even the Fed’s interest rate decision.
But the good news is… it’s the PERFECT setup for the same signal that’s hit 61 winners so far in 2024…
I cannot promise future returns or against losses but…
As far as I know, this signal can tell us with high accuracy which stocks will likely explode higher once these assets worth trillions of dollars get transferred on Friday.
The profits and performance shown are not typical, we make no future earnings claims, and you may lose money. From 9/17/21 through 9/06/24, the average win rate is 68.8%. The average weighted rate of return on options trades was 6.84% over a 3 day average hold time.