I started paper trading to determine the difference in dynamics of the weeklies vs. the last week of monthlies. With respect to credit spreads I could find little difference. The last week of monthlies require careful attention to managing credit spreads. That is perhaps why many who like credit spreads none-the-less bail before the last week. I let over 90% of my credit spreads expire. I only bail when market gap risk is too large. After paper-trading, I moved to my next stage, pre-production, i.e. trading with small money. There is a summary of my results in the journal I post here. Even small money trading returning good credit every week can make a significant contribution to my monthly performance. Monthlies cycle every 60 days. I think at least 2 percentage points of this month's performance was due to small money trading of weeklies. I'm still nervous, so I'm still in small money trading of weeklies.
I've been trading with IB but opened an account now at TradeMonster. I'm wanting to find a way to get standard deviations on the underlying, to set my strikes. Does anyone know if there is a way to determine standard deviations at TradeMonster? WB