Hi, I just went through the course.  I have a question on the iron condor.  I had subscribed to another site that did those.  They said they picked strike prices far away from the current price so that the odds were better than 90% that they would make money.  Of course the market started to gyrate 100s of points per day and everyone was holding their breath for days. So I learned that these spread trades are not boring at all but can be extremely stressful.  I was glad to see that you weren’t just touting you make money 90% of the time.  I see that all the time but they fail to explain that you can lose 100% of your money up to 10% of the time.  That makes the strategy not conservative at all.  So my question is how much capital would you allocate to iron condors?  Also, [...]

In my last post I listed a Free Trade on POT which is called a Calendar Spread, also known as a Time Spread.

In that trade we sold the Oct 90 Calls and Bought the Nov 90 Calls.

The trade makes money when POT stays in range around 90. Basically what we want is the Oct option to decay and lose value while the Nov option (which we bought) retains its value. Time Decay quickly erodes an option’s value, especially in the last 30 days. That is why I prefer to put these types of trades on with 30 or fewer days left for the front month.

We enter this trade with a debit meaning we paid for the trade. That is because the Nov option was more expensive than the Oct option because the Nov option has more time premium.  POT also has earnings after the Oct option expires which means that the volatility (value) of the Nov option will be elevated (at least a little more than normal).

What we want is for POT to stay in between the break evens until it gets close to expiration. The Oct option loses value everyday and that is how we make money. During the last few days before expiration the fluctuations in prices can move wildly.  That is why I prefer to be out of this trade before expiration week. But in this trade we put it on pretty late and will have to stay in longer.

To exit a Calendar Spread you have to sell it. Otherwise you will still be holding the back month (Nov) option even if the front month (Oct) expires.

The beauty of Calendar Spreads is that they are cheap to trade, easy to adjust, and can result in large profits – 20-40% is common. You can also keep your losses small.

Hello OptionGenius.

I have been trading credit spreads for about 3 months now with some success.  I read the nine part  course and realize that my past training didn’t discuss much about selection of trades and adjustment of trades.  When I was looking around the website, I saw a brief reference on how you scan for and pick your trade opportunities, how you use the mathematical models with standard deviation to help your selection and how to determine exit points., but there weren’t too many details on these topics.   Do you share the information about scans, about the mathematical models and how to use them as the subscriptions move along?

Eric,

For credit spreads most traders use technical analysis to find support and resistance and use those levels to pick strikes. I have found that, that strategy works except when it doesn’t. support and resistance are guidelines not walls that the stock will [...]

The Options Industry Council Announces New Study Finds Collar Strategies Outperform Buy And Hold

Chicago – September 23, 2009

The results of a new study examining the use of options in a collar strategy (both active and passive implementations) on the PowerShares QQQ™ exchange-traded fund (ETF) show it provides superior returns to the traditional buy and hold strategy while reducing risk by almost 65%.

The Options Industry Council (OIC) is pleased to note the study reaffirms the risk management potential of equity options, finding that during the entire 10-year study period, including the sub-periods around the tech bubble and credit crisis, collars significantly outperformed the QQQ, providing much needed capital protection.

“Loosening Your Collar: Alternative Implementations of QQQ Collars,” by Edward Szado and Thomas Schneeweis, looked at data from March 1999 to May 2009. It concluded that over the entire 122 month period the passive collar returned almost 150%, while the QQQ [...]

Great question from a member:

Last time with MCD position you opened another Butterfly to bring the Delta Neutral. Which I have been following and I thought it is very interesting. And maybe that’s the reason to raise me this question.
So my question is related to Iron Condor. Why do usually we close the

 position and open a new one when the price comes after us, instead

of adding some positions to bring the Delta Neutral.
For example: our last RUT we closed 640/650 and opened 660/670.

If we had keep 640/650 and add something to bring the Delta low levels

 again would have similar effect??
I know since we are just handling low quantity is more difficult to create this kind of sceneario, but assuming that the quantity would be greater, do you think that the mechanism of adding positions to bring the Delta low has the same effect as to roll up/down the position?
Just trying to get a better understand from the options world.
 
Tks a lot,
 
Paulo

Excellent question.
 
You are right, the same adjustment can be used in a condor. You can add options to lower the delta. That is one of the adjustments I look at. And it can work. But it depends on what is going on in the market. This month, the market was advancing regularly. Just about everyday it was going up. Adding some calls would only protect the deltas for a couple days and we would then have to do something else. That is why I moved the calls. It is a more drastic adjustment but I thought it was warranted in this environment. if you have a condor where the market makes a huge move upwards in a day and it might go back down, that is when you can add some calls to lower your deltas. Or if there is fear of a big move you can lower your deltas before the move so that no matter what happens you do not get hurt. You can then remove the bought options after the fear has passed.
 
Allen

An interesting article today in the WSJ talk about how more and more small investors are trading options. The sad par tis most of these investors do not the true danger of the options they are trading. Only too late do they realize that buying options is a losing proposition.

The good news is the more options are traded the more liquidity they will have and the more competition among brokers will lead to lower commissions for all of us.

here is the article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125202073403184971.html?ru=yahoo&mod=yahoo_hs#articleTabs%3Darticle

By JEFF D. OPDYKE

Most investors are hoping stock prices push higher. The short-sellers want stocks to sink lower. And then there is Marlene Sackheim: She hopes the market goes nowhere.

The 57-year-old chief financial officer of her husband’s pain-management clinic in Pensacola, Fla., trades options for herself and other family members. Her preferred strategy — colorfully dubbed a naked strangle — rakes in the money when the Standard & Poor’s [...]