Newbie Question

LOL Willie... years ago I traded american style options on cash currency which were listed on the PHLX... we used the CME futures options as a vega/gamma hedge often.

When the dollar / yen swap was really wide and the yen made huge highs and then backed off there were thousands and thousands of puts which were a theoretical exercise. If you could work your way into the pool of short puts which were not being exercised you could make a fortune in those days. There are always sloppy traders and position holders in products. As MM’s we would trade thousands of spreads with each other and exercise them that day. If you got assigned on fewer then you traded you sat there and collected the swap over night to the tune of big bucks.


Interesting thread going here.

 

"are you short stock when you sell the puts?"


Rarely. My set-up is usually calendar spreads.

Joe.

 

harvesting the "failure to exercise mistake" of other traders makes perfect sense to me....

 

I would not really call them traders.... they were end users of the product... lots of companies used to hedge their FX exposure themselves with that product.