Just to ask a dumb question. If you try to trade a combo let's say for 17 because you want to buy AND sell 17 calls AND puts, is your proceeds net debit(credit) X 17? So in OP's case, let's say he's sold 17 IC and the credit was 0.52, he/she's going to get 17 X $ 0.52 X 100 = $884 credited into his/her account?
Not understanding the preface, I'll answer like this: "totals of an options trade are equal to price of the transaction x operative option multiplier x number of contracts ------------------------------------ gross credit/debit - any extant ticket charge ("Do they still exist?!?") - per-option_contract cost (x1:leg; x2 vertical; x3 broken-wing butterfly; x4 [iron] condor) -------------------------------------- net credit/debit" So, while we don't know whether transaction costs are included, thus far we could go with 52¢ combo price x 100 multiplier x 17 expressed combo total -------------------------------- $884 as you surmised.
Yeah, it is. I'm experimenting with earnings plays. I have never attempted trading earnings before using defined-risk trades so I'm starting small. I just asked the question because I'm curious why two legs of my trade were so mispriced from the market. Obviously, I would not have been able to sell the expensive / mispriced leg without buying the expensive / mispriced leg. I just wonder what did the other party gain by selling an expensive leg and buying an expensive leg? I was initially thinking that maybe the other side was trying to do some tax loss harvesting by creating a realized loss on closing an existing position while generating unrealized profit on a new open position, but that doesn't really make sense either.
Its as though you didn't even read the explanations given to you. I gave you a detailed description of what happened.
The response you quote (I think) describes the thinking that brought him to post his question, not where he's at right now. (and per your solid response in part, too!) At any event OP, the situation you found yourself in (with a fairly priced IC, but with individual legs that appear whackadoodle), is one reason why I *tend* to do less ICs than simply "balancing [my] margin load top and bottom [and expiry]" via entering a matching load of verticals in puts and calls, than that single, possibly problematic-to-exit, IC. Been there, done that, and while I probably got out just fine, I don't need that extra bit of calculation/re-calculation/re-checking-of-numbers going on, when the market may be moving on me. I want my mind on trading, not on resolving pricing anomalies in my inventory. Sheeesh.
FSU, I read your post on the first page where you explained that the whole iron condor must execute on only 1 of many exchanges. Which I question as firms pay a lot of money for microwave and now laser communications between exchanges for arbitrage purposes, but for now, let's assume that's what happened. So all 4 legs executed on a single exchange. Fine. What I don't understand is how I was able to sell a 55 LEN call for 2.83...that's not only way outside the best market price, but if I told my broker to sell a 55 LEN call for only 2.83...if my broker was smart, my order would never hit the market...my broker would have been able to lock in about $200 in quick profit with absolutely no risk by instantly writing the call to me and then covering at best market price an instant later. (I assume that there are rules in place to prevent the broker from taking advantage of an order typo by a customer which would require them to send my order to the exchange (any exchange) so that the customer accepts no worse than the ask price.) So because of that, I don't understand how my order could have been traded against other individual orders...it must have been traded, at least partially against at least one other spread. And only because of that was the market maker able to "assign" some strange prices to some of the legs for some unknown purpose.
Never do this unless the spread book is horrible in liquidity or depth which they typically are not. For every time you luck out legging in there will be plenty of times you do not, so avoid the risk/time-sink/etc and just use the spread book. Ugh, just don't.