Elitethinker, thanks, love to hear an outline of your monthly spy strategies if you dont mind. (or send me a private message) thanks Michael
Aaaah well!!! Finally got a new wireless ISP around here. Have been using a difficult 115 kbps and just plugged in the new wireless system by a competitor with 2 gigabytes or something. What a difference. Sometime November will set up my cash account now, that I have the computer speeds needed to trade decent. I made a mess of some overnight trades. My notes were messy and couldn´t tell what I was doing and testing with Debit and Credit Volaitlty spreads. So I´ve scrapped them all, which is a shame as the market did go my way. Today´s the day I try to get into a credit spread weekly anyway. See what happens before the close. See if I can have a better week, with + $618 already in the bank. Now to make a bit with the credit spread hopefully and not get hit. The weekly Credit Spread is the TOS account and the others were testing on scratch paper. I do have two trading systems now at any rate. Progress is slow, but it is progress at least.
Falconview, Great news! Now you can use the downloadable TOS version. Or will you use another one for the real money trading? Michael
very interesting article on settlement of RUT options, and I need to find how all the others settle also. http://www.optionetics.com/market/articles/2008/02/25/understanding-how-rut-options-are-settled Scary to think that at the end of thursday you are safe, then the settlement price jumps up 30 points! What does he mean by he demands a hard close on the Thursday if the GTC order is not filled. Thanks Michael
Michael I was certainly thinking of the TOS desktop. I´m more than pleased with TOS. The bit extra in commissions is worth the service they give. Put on my one side credit spread. 50 OEX 520/515 Puts at .10 cents just now. Doesn´t look like I´ll be able to complete an Iron Condor tomorrow though? For the NDX this would be the 2000 NDX. Monthly and weekly is the same thing this week. Don´t know what happened to the two NOV. Volatility credit spreads on scratch paper I was trying to trade straddling the index. The market made the move, but the two spreads I dug out again , from the waste basket, lost. I can´t figure that one out? Think it had to do with putting them on with volatility high and inflated premiums maybe? Not really sure. I sold them cheap $2 for one and $1.75 for the other. The sold side moved into the money. Or at least the spreads were cheap, but as the market moved them, the spread got wider instead of narrower. I´d sure like to figure out the mistake there and what happened? Got me mystified. I like the trade, but if I don´t understand the nuances can´t trade it, or put it on. It worked the first time great. I can only guess you have to get a lot more credit, like over $3.25 or something? That reduces me from three trading strategies to two again. Maybe TJ could figure them out? Those spreads really had me going crazy for couple of hours trying to figure them out. No solution! I just don´t know enough.
Stanford I don´t understand the exercise and settlement bit clearly either. I was making a list of the indexes. My understanding is that American style, if you try a credit spread straddling the index as in a volatility play, when the sold lower side moves across and goes from OTM to ITM can be assigned. This jargon gets me confused. Whereas my understanding of European type options is that the assignment thing happens only at the end of the month, at expiration. So I have NDX for the American index and the NDS for the European. The OEX for American and the RZA, and XEO for the European. The RUT for the American and the RLS for the European. There are a long list of indexes more than I knew existed on the CBOE site. Anyway if I had got that Volatility Credit Spread nuances down, I looked up to see that I would trade them on the European to avoid the dangers of being assigned on the sold side as it moved 1 cent into the money. That particular strategy would only be traded on the European index version is my understanding? I´ve asked Trading Journal couple of times to explain assignment, but guess he is very busy making bushel baskets of money? He was going to put it on his BLOG but never did. You are talking something entirely different with the settlement, of which I only have a vague idea and as there is nothing I can do about it, other than closing a trade early while it is active, just forget it.
falconview, I think you are corrct on the European vs american, but the thing that really got my attention was how the settlement price could be 30 points above where the last trade was on Thursday. That could take a worthless expiration (which we want) and turn it into a loss (which, duh, we dont want) Michael
Run my end of day models as TJ calls it. Looking for a bottom on this pullback and resumption of some upward move. See if I can identify the bottom tomorrow.
Yes, butterfly on the oex. Most are short straddles with the longs 15 points away, set up on Friday. Exit is 1.3 times trade low. Getting killed this week lol. Monthly spreads tend to do well with a high probability, although binomial and low r/r. I'm not a fan of adjustments. Limit orders. Use ThinkorSwim. They have historical data, you can test all you want. Make sure everything survives '08.