Eddie since I only trade the ES right now..don't worry too much about earnings. I'm looking at the macro pic and just keep sailing. I'm not a speedboat so I can't turn on a dime, but not an ocean liner either...so I just adjust my delta's accordingly. I am looking to short carefully the calls right now or buy a few otm puts but my personal opinion is just choppy in July. Butterflies, reverse calendars or some kind of back spread are usually good options going into earnings on equities...but there is a lot of brain damage that goes with it....tough trade.
RR, Whats your reason for trading the ES, instead of spx or spy. Just curious. For the earnings play on goog and apple, i will wait for the week of the earnings to put on a position. I see the SP500 has snapped back to the underbelly of the 50day ma, we should pause around here. Most of my options trades are still directional, but with much more cushion and benefit of time decay, etc. Ef
Futures use SPAN margin, very favorable to options sellers vs selling options against individual stocks or the SPY. My 2 cents.
Besides what naked said the ES is traded almost 24/7, easy to use the cash to hedge short term any option trade in trouble. The commission is much more favorable and you can short a contract before you buy the hedge which is close to impossible in the SPX for the small retail trader. SPX has an insane SET which I firmly believe has been manipulated much in the past. In my mind its a dinosaur...useful only to hedge VERY large (million plus) portfolio's. I will never trade the SPX again.
I remember trying to pull up nq futs on interactive brokers option chain, and i got a message, something about: not approved for level", etc... I thought i had the highest approval level, i can sell spx, spy, nasdaq, appl, goog, etc,, all naked. I will contact iB in the morning. I have several portfolio margin accounts with them. I remember reading at the CBOE website, they mention spx options can not be assigned to you if you have sold them. Is this not a very important positive.? Can es be assigned to you if you are short them on options.?? Thanks for the info RR. EF
Good short thread on SPAN, thought i would add it here. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=196845&perpage=6&pagenumber=1 EF
yes..say I'm short the 1 contract (weekly)1610 put at close tomorrow. If the ES (sep) ends at 1609.75 then I will be assigned an ES and my account will be charged the .25...so basically cash settled and I'm long 1 contract of ES at 1610. The risk of course is now I'm long the ES cash so I need to sell it when trading begins on Sun PM to get flat and of course risk a gap down. However I could also sell the next weekly 1610 call to help off set some of my loss. Or buy an otm put to collar the trade. Many different options! The only time you are not assigned is end of the quarters then it is all cash settled. oh and there is NO reason you should not be allowed to trade the Futures options. Interestingly TOS doesn't offer YM option futures while they have NQ, ES, GC NG CL and most other popular futures. They SHOW the options chain but when I called they said they don't offer them to anyone as yet. I do know IB does offer ES options so its just them flipping a switch to get you going. also...back to my example if tomorrow I get nervous I can always just buy it back anytime up to 4:15 pm Eastern. On quarterlies you have to close at 8:15 or 8:30 AM(read the specs)