Nazz - I hear you man, I had a decent position size & open profits on wheat and wham 14 days work gone up in smoke in a day simply because CME caved in to pit traders to close electronic Ags before pit session open. We are not all from Jurassic Park you know and loathe putting orders in the pit. The October back month contracts can't use them broker in liquidate mode only for those months. As for options as you may have gathered from my posts I specialise only in directional futures all markets, and avoid options like plague for good reasons. One man's meat another's poison I guess. I got hurt in grains but got a soothing massage in 6C - its gonna rocket.
How can you use deep ITM calls when the options have price limits as well? Wouldn't you have to use options that aren't locked to do the synthetics? Anyway I don't want to brag because I can't after almost blowing out a couple months ago in the wheat run up but I have been playing with a volatility strategy before grain reports. This is a low risk strategy essentially limited to the price of the options bot. I buy the ATM put the day before a report and buy the mini grains against it. I wouldn't do the minis if I was better capitalized as a percentage of risk for my account. But on Thursday i bot the CZ 500 p @ 29 and 4 of the emini corn around 497. So anyway on the day it isn't that great of a winner but if we open sunday night around where we finished today synthetically it becomes largely profitable relative to the capital it took to set it up. It's mostly a volatility play and if the report sends us zooming one way or the other it can make money. The risk is stagnation and with time decay. I do a similar strategy the day before expiration but with a tight strangle hoping for a pop. Anyway it's an inexpensive way to play grain reports. It's worked a few times for me. I'm no expert and judging by the balance sheet for this year not one to emulate. I share the strategy only because a previous poster asked for potential ways to play the grain reports.
Thanks there dude, you know what in any word as long as the first letter and last letter are correct all other letters in word can be wrong and the person reading it will know the meaning - try it This is so becuase the hmuan mnid when readnig only sees the frist and lsat words. and I do have aan A+ in English Language from Cambgridge Univesrity.
Do the options have price limits? I assume the answer is no. The 340 ZSX calls were up 80 pts today. Assuming your ratios are 1:1, that position is identical to that of buying an ATM call.
I don't do them 1:1 or it would be a synthetic call. I like the potential to make money either way on the move. We just as well could have been limit down plus another 40 in the synthetics. Having the full option vs the 4 minis gives profit potential on a large move down as well. I was slightly bullish before the report so did it 1 option to 4 minis instead of 3 minis.