rocky racoon, thanks for explaining the double calendar and diagonal so clearly. (By the way, all the "named strategies" are found easily on the web and explained with graphs to boot.) I do think in such a low IV environment, the double diagonal or double calendar strategies look more attractive. The primary difference between them is the potential margin requirement for the double diagonal. If the sold strike (which is in the nearer month) is closer to the money than the bought strike, a margin requirement comes into play similar to a credit spread. The significant difference, however, is that as the market moves toward your sold strike, you usually won't be having a significant crisis because your bought strike will be rising in value, too, and sometimes even faster depending on the nature of the movement, and the distance to the strikes. Double calendars don't require margin so your risk is simply the cost of putting them on. Now for the hybrid IC concept-- IC's are obviously risky creatures, as I have shown with my hypothetical example. It would therefore seem prudent to mitigate the risk. This means coming up with a couple of hedging strategies to limit the risk of the slow (sometimes) march upward, or the more rare but dramatic market crash. I don't use balanced IC's and I do have hedges in place (which can, but don't always reduce the potential profit). I've done this for a while, and I haven't had to close my IC for this month. It is still doing fine, with a week to go, and I'm planning on starting my move to October early next week. I'll let folks give that some thought and offer ideas.
a married put ... as you are trading has the same profit graph as an outright call options... just fyi...
now by spreading across the term structure you are saying something about the pricing between it... and leveraging that.. this isn't a blanket strategy for any two corresponding months.... as you say..for low vol environments because your sort of more corrrelated by being in different terms as far as your risk to the rising or falling underlying.. by you can exploit the theta differential.... does that make sense? i'm sort of saying this to clarify it to myself as well
thats what your doing though.. buying stock and buying an exit by buying a put.. getting your dynamic stop by buying an options per 100 shares.. this has the exact same profit as buying a call option..... thats what your doing right?
I use Options as surrogates for stocks. Will buy a 6 month ITM Call with a real high Delta, instead of 100 shares. Is that what you mean?
I know this is a dead horse but I could not resist commenting on it. It seems Put_Master considers a naked put superior to a put credit spread in terms of risk. The only time when this is true in the face of just cold facts (without making any assumptions about the nature of the traders/investors) is when you are doing the naked selling in a cash secured account. Because the trader needs to hold the entire amount required to buy the whole amount of shares if assigned, then the downside risk is limited as, realistically, very few stocks drop to zero (although just take a look at Digital Domain for a recent example). However if you are using a margin account to sell the naked puts, then a substantial drop in the price of the underlying (black swan) would be enough to wipe you out or to leave you in a very bad shape. So in conclusion, if you are using a cash secured account for your naked puts you might do better than the guy with the credit spread in a black swan scenario. For a margin account the same advantage is not as clear cut. -Blueplayer