just curiuos.. i was reading some stuff in the latest Stocks and Commodities mag and i've been thinking about it lately as well.. being as it that certain instruments "futures" have more leverage... you can sell higher number of contracts relative to the actual amount needed out of your account to hedge.. if you follow... page 64 in sept issue.. instead of using the actual underlying in which you only get .50 margin on.. you could say buy 100 calls on the s&p with a delta of .50 you could then short 50 futures contracts... so say thats long vol.. but you could short vol as well in the same respect... so my question is... Does anyone have experience with delta hedging with futures? i wanna figure out a way to dynamically hedge options with futures such that i can better use leverage to sell premium.. that or gamma scalp..
Delta Hedging using Futures In practice, hedging is often carried out using a position in futures rather than one in the underlying cash asset. Mathematically, under the no-arbitrage argument, it can be shown that e(rád)t futures contracts have the same sensitivity to stock price movements as one cash contract.
ATM Calls delta hedged with futures are synthetic straddles. So you might consider trading straddles instead.
I think a better way of putting it is "it's pretty easy to get scalped by gamma when you are short premium"
CDcaveman, maybe the lack of response is because it's unclear what the question is. Hedging options on futures with the underlying futures is pretty straightforward. What is it you'd like to know?
I understand that trading long straddles involves buying both calls and puts so major time decay to suffer as well as major vega exposure, am I correct? Calls/Puts delta hedged with futures looks more like a vol.arb to me. Yet, sometimes there are not long term futures listed on the exchange, for instance, dec14 futures; in that case the only way is to play a dec14 regular straddle.
yeah.. these are all things that pertain to getting your deltas from the outright underlying as well.. great insight guys!
Yes but delta-hedged calls (or puts) have the same exposure as delta neutral straddles. You can use whatever futures available, just take future dividends into account. If the underlying does not pay dividends it's safe to use any futures, I doubt a change in interest rates will hurt you.