Market comments 20220310

Finally a bit of steam off the markets today, however the #VIX is still very high and nobody should be complacent.

On top of the turmoil caused by the Russian leaders the Fed is going to meet next week and it's expected that they will raise the interest rates, which might add more fuel to the market selloff.

So at the moment it's a funny situation as nobody can predict which way the market will go from here. However, the beauty of stock option trading is that you don't have to play one side. Think about buying a stock. You have 50-50% chance of making or losing money. With options, you can also use strategies, like strangles, which will be profitable as long as the stock remain within a range. In other words, you can profit irrespective of the direction the stock moves.

So what's my pick for today?

#CCL ( #CarnivalCruiseLines )

I must admit that I failed to check this stock yesterday and I went with Kellogs, which generated a bit of profit but nowhere near as much as CCL would have. Anyways, at $17.27 this stock is still very attractive so I would sell a $16 put with March expiry to avoid the earnings in April. (Earnings can make one rich or broke within 30 minutes so in most cases I prefer to avoid it.)

The stats

Trade Type: Short Put

Strike: $16

Expiry: 18 Mar

Delta: 29

IV Rank: 78

Premium: $0.4

Cap Req: $218

Annualised Prof: 744%