Question for anyone.. back in the day when these firms existed (or maybe SMB/cutler today) besides JBO and portfolio margin, what did these firms offer the options trader over a current TOS or IB set up ? thanks
Cheaper commission, access to experienced traders if you are trading from a floor, trading platforms eg Redi Plus etc...
When you have a JBO with a decent fee structure with clearing, the fees will be 10% of IB's. I find options fees too high for med freq trading with IB. Hedging makes it too expensive...
Most options prop firms are market makers, which I doubt will take on someone who has no experience... unless you apply for internship or traineeship and try to flog your strategy. But they will be skeptical, since those firms usually know what they're doing...
Wait, I just found your other thread: http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/short-selling-ditm-options.300721/ So is that your strat? Sell OTM to collect premium based on probability? You are basically saying you know more than the market makers and therefore option "x" is too expensive...? I have a hard time believing that. Sounds a bit like that "karen the superdoopertrader"-strategy. There's a lot of risk in that...
I'm looking for funding. If any firm or even a private investor is interessted, he/she can contact me via PM. Such a cooperation would be very lucrative for both parties as 20+% per month is a very realistic figure. I mean, I could with the help of my program trade a small account of him/her to prove the effectiveness of the trades the program finds. I think that what I have is maybe the most sophisticated program for finding lucrative trades. It can have any number of legs, currently limiting it to max 4 legs plus underlying, but mostly using only 1 or 2 legs, as these are easy to fill in the market. I'm hereby not offering any commercial service, just looking for a funding and/or a fair cooperation.
No, it's not that simple, and it is with very minimal or sometimes even with no risk at all (sometimes such spreads indeed occur). I'll shortly post some trades based on yesterdays close prices for easy verification... For example this simple 1-legger: Underlying=EMES Spot=10.57 Exp=2016-07-15 Type=Call-Short K=15.50 L=0.30 B=0.15 A=0.45 Vol=2 OI=2 As can be seen, the credit would be at least 0.15, and that means about 12% profit in 3.5 weeks, using margin requirements of the broker IB. The rationale for this trade is: S2K=47.48%... And regarding MMs: one usually can't make any profitable trade with MMs, it's the other market participants with whom I, actually the pgm, try to make profitable trades. Such profitable moments occur mostly intraday, very seldom when the options market is closed.
Addendum: my program uses the last spot, ie. in this case the after hour spot (or before mkt spot). And it is $10.51, therefore the S2K-calc is based on this value and not on the EOD-spot of 10.57. Here's the actual spot (ie. using the "After Hours" spot) And: as said, intraday better (ie. more profitable) trades occur...