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Did You Take Your Meds?

Hey there my options younglings,

Today I have a trade for a great change in our culture…

If you are like me, you hate the idea of having to take medication. 

I don’t even like to take aspirin.

Not to sound like a tough guy, but I didn’t even take a pain reliever after my C-Section or my knee surgeries.  (And Ladies, I think we can all agree that women have a higher threshold for pain than men do!)  The slightest little ache or pain and you will hear about it.  

My Mom says every time she has a cold my Dad says he has the same thing and I’ve actually heard her say, “Can’t I just be sick by myself?”  Haha!  I just think that is so funny.

Even vitamins are hard to swallow to me…

I prefer the gummies, they are like a little sweet treat and it is not cheating on your diet.  (Aren’t we always “dieting”?  UGH!)

My husband Scott is all about the vitamins, he takes everything, including Turmeric at $39.99 a bottle at Costco!  And he has to have all the bottles on the kitchen counter!  I hate the clutter.  That and the thermostat are our too big beefs.

Now since we are talking about health, we all have “that” friend, right?

My friend Amy reads everything on health and longevity and passes it on to us.  Not that we are health nuts, trust me we love our French fries and Rose’.  

But we read that it is possible to live to 120 years old and we always say that is going to be us.  We have to because we had our kids later in life.  Being career women, I hate to say it, but it was kind of an afterthought.  At 38 years old, clock ticking, I thought I could have gone either way, but thank God we had our son.  There is nothing like being a parent–toughest job in the world, though.  

Maybe tied with trading in the pits 🙂

Anyway, talking about taking medication, eventually I am sure, we will all end up taking something in our later years.  Modern medicine is pretty incredible and if it helps keep us alive longer, we want it.

Last night Amy said she read that intermittent fasting kills off the weaker cells in your body and that would include cancer cells. Well there is a famous company called Amgen that specializes in biotechnology of ALL sorts!

I am talking about all of this because I found an interesting spread you have to see in $AMGN.

I like to compare the implied volatility of the options against the historical volatility of the stock and find cheap options where the “IV” is lower than the “HV.”  We have that in $AMGN with an IV of 31.83 and HV of 39.71.  

Looking at the stock chart, it has been trading within the range of $232 and $262 since the first of July.  It closed at $235.72 on Friday, near the bottom end of the range in a zone of what I believe can be support. 

So I would like to go long in $AMGN by buying a call vertical, that is buying a call just out of the money and selling a call against it further out of the money.

I like buying the Nov20 255 calls with an implied vol of 29.59 and selling the 270 calls with a 31.15 IV.  Paying $1.65 for the spread.  I would take my loss if the stock trades below $230 and take my profits up $.70 or so on the spread, especially if it happens quickly.  (Note, with $AMGN earnings on October 28th, I will be out of the spread before then.)

My $NKE 125/115 put spread I paid $1.94 for traded up to $2.60, that’s a 34% gain.

Thanks for reading…See You Next Tuesday! 

Licia Leslie

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