Apple, Inc. (AAPL) will announce its earnings on July 19th and Apple is one of those stocks that investors expect to see gap up or down by the opening bell on the next trading day. Most analysts covering the stock are expecting it to reach the $400 level. Given the stock's volatility on earnings announcements, it has the potential to just go there. In past AAPL earnings, guidance has been the deciding factor making the stock tick red or green on these post-earnings trading days.

In this article, I highlight the best priced options, which you can choose based on your target price. I also look at put options for our bears and the long term stock holders looking to hedge themselves.

The July options will expire the week prior to the earnings announcement, so the play will go with August options (longer maturities would work too but the August

The allegations of fraud against the Chinese industrial Harbin Electric, Inc. (HRBN) by Citron Research has generated a lot of interest among speculators to take short positions in the stock. For those like myself that have gone through enough material to believe Citron's report, this article explains why the most interesting short position to enter (at the time the article was written) is with $16 and $23 December put options.

The rationale goes as follows:

Timing
Harbin Electric CEO Tianfy Yang claims that he will take HRBN private at $24/share by the end of the year through Tech Full Electric Company Limited (a limited liability firm that he set up in the Cayman Islands). This gives the CEO a 6 months life line to either execute the buyout, admit he is a fraud, or come up with some other shenanigans to delay that "deal". So we