I was hoping to get some assistance with placing my first futures options trade. I'm looking to buy some out of the money calls and have some questions. For background info, I'm trading with Interactive Brokers and the call options I want to buy have no open interest or bid/offers. FOP is on GLOBEX. It's out of the money and expires in 2012. 1. There is a close price shown on IB, as I understand it this is a theoretical value calculated by the exchange for margin calculations... is it reasonable to expect that I could trade at close to that price? 2. Similarly, where is a good spot to calculate theoretical option prices and get a gauge on the markets volatility expectations? 3. What is the best approach to executing the order to get a good fill? 4. How active are market makers in long dated options? 5. How can I be confident of closing out the option in the future (assuming its in profit) without exercising? Thanks in advance.
I've never traded FOP but I'll give this a shot 1. I think it's reasonable if there were open interest 2. just google Excel add-in for Black-Scholes or Binomial, I just wrote it in VBA; I think you could look at the VIX or create your own predictive model, search GARCH 3. not sure what you mean here, if you want it just hit the ask. 4. no idea 5. Why would you exercise? You can close anytime provided there is a bid