(It's been awhile since I posted anything here.) I was cleaning up my disk and ran across a file called "box.jpg". It's just a picture the looks to be two butterflies initially, a call fly just below current underlying price and a put fly just above. There is an embedded box in the middle. There are a few adjustments shown. It is signed by "Carl T. Knox". I have no idea where it came from. Is anyone familiar with this? I have tried searching but haven't found anything here or on the web.
Is it the same as this?: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/t...sk-then-promptly-loses-almost-2000-2019-01-22
Yes, except for selling deep ITM calls on 2 year expiration, it just being box and the underlying being UVXY. Maybe the extra long call might have saved him.
OK, the overlapping flies are inefficient which results in a short 72/73 box, but the box does nothing for the structure. The guy is long the 71-74 condor. The call and put flies make it a combo and therefore you have a embedded box, so what? Buying the 71-74 call (or put) condor is the same thing.
A (poor) analogy would be to short the 71C/74P strangle at 3.90 instead of trading the 71P/74C strangle at 4.00 as the inside combo take s dime in edge loss. You wouldn't knowingly trade the overlapping put and call fly to arrive at a condor.
I wonder if Carl T. Knox is lounging on a private island somewhere with all the money he printed from this back in '06. I imagine it's about as much of an options Holy Grail as all the other alleged ones. It's always the hidden details and unexpected changes in volatility, skew, etc. that ruin them.
That diagram looks like an engineering mechanic static problem. It had been many years since my last engineering mechanic class at Ohio State. I suppose it's a lot simpler than Jim Simons' models that need physicist to figure out. It's time to hit the engineering mechanic book which I still keep.