Famous option traders

Discussion in 'Options' started by macrotrader, Jun 14, 2011.

  1. Nobel prizes are given only to socialists by a committee of communists. Ed would never have a chance.:D
     
    #41     Jun 15, 2011
  2. Hull, Yass and Ritchie are probably better-known for developing the infrastructure than any individual trading prowess. All of them got their start when the straddle in the 30y was a $1,000 wide.
     
    #42     Jun 15, 2011
  3. Is that why Milton Friedman won one in 1976?
     
    #43     Jun 15, 2011
  4. I'm not big on backtesting or historical data, but that seems like an outlier (if true).:D
     
    #44     Jun 15, 2011
  5. Lornz

    Lornz

    And Hayek in '74...
     
    #45     Jun 15, 2011
  6. I know of a guy, can't recall his name. He worked for Phillip Brothers in the silver desk when I was wet behind the ears.

    At one point in time he was heavily short spot due to a bunch of client orders, and there was no way to cover in the futures or cash market without adversely moving the price a lot. Options were expiring in 3 days and he started to buy all the out of the money calls he could for the minimum tick for more than he was short.

    He then exercised them all at exactly the last possible moment.(nearly all the options were out of the money and were to expire worthless).

    Silver had a melt up of several dollars that appeared in several papers and magazines.

    I asked him what happened to the people that sold him the options. He answered: nonya.

    nonya?. I said.

    nonya fokin business!.

    The time was early 1988 I think.

    He should be famous on that story alone!.
     
    #46     Jun 15, 2011
  7. I made quite a bit of money as a consequence of reading his first book. Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One
     
    #47     Jun 15, 2011
  8. They blew any remaining credibility with the Obama Peace Prize..
     
    #48     Jun 15, 2011
  9. Cottle describes a interesting gamma scalping technique that he credits to Saliba. Instead of adjusting deltas with the underlying, Saliba would adjust with backspreads, in both directions. These adjustments pile on more and more gamma (and theta burn as a consequence), but apparently, Saliba did very well with them.

    <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Geboadk6Ec8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
     
    #49     Jun 15, 2011
  10. Nassim Taleb is the man. Reading his books makes the entire pursuit of option selling incoherant and overly risky. I would trade an out of the money strategy in this market for sure.
     
    #50     Jun 15, 2011