$CAT: Plowing Green on StockTwits

• kileyay
• July 21st, 2009

Caterpillar Inc. ($CAT) shares are plowing higher pre-market. They’re selling for over $41 – up from $36.65 at the close Monday. The heavy-machinery maker’s profit fell only 66%.

Caterpillar posted income of $371 million, or 60 cents a share, down from $1.1 billion, or $1.74 a share, a year earlier. Job-cut charges and depressed sales of product dragged.

The profit beat Wall Street’s expectations, and the company revised full-year earnings expectations.

The StockTwits stream is humming with chatter on CAT. Our own Steve Place (@stevenplace) from Investing With Options has some ideas to plow green:

He elaborates: “We’ll see volatility come out of August as the earnings risk is no longer there. So you pick up a directionless play by buying a call and a put near the money…as the stock moves, you’ve got gamma on your side and the further the stock moves either way, the more money you make. And then you can delta hedge by using common.”

Others in the StockTwits community are all over the numbers:

Continue to watch the $CAT stream on StockTwits for more real-time analysis and trade talk.