I remeber my office having them schwatatrons. That was late 80's I doubt those are still around. plus in the interest of the topic, they did'nt do option scans
You are right....I got the scanning from proprietary sources. I had forgotten about that. We had a lot of computers, and I had little knowledge of them at the time. (late 80's like you said) But essentially the schwartzatron did the same kind of "what if" plotting that Optionvue is most useful for. I don't believe that with the decimalization and multi- market listings now, that scanned opportunities will last long enough to excecute. If they do, there will be a reason, which makes it all a moot point. I hope I am wrong. I always am looking for new ways to exploit the market. RS7
This is advocated by Larry MacMillan in his books (he still thought it was the best on the market as of the last NY online trading expo). Larry is a well known option trader and author on the subject. As far as I can tell he is a fairly highly regarded individual. I got the trial subscription for Option Vue about 9 months ago which cost $50 for I believe it was 30 days. The trial subscription is the way to go by the way, you should contact them to see if they still offer it. I found it to be pretty powerful in its ability to chart and calculate max gain and loss outcomes for various strategies. There is a scanning feature that finds option contracts that meet prespecified criteria which is its big selling point. As I recall these criteria are fairly limited though. More importantly you should read some of the comments made by Gene Weissman and others on these boards regarding the absence of a trading edge when trading options off the floor. I found these arguments to be pretty persuasive.
I like it a lot after having trialled it about 2 months ago. However, I don't like being nickel and dimed for their separate features. Why would anyone buy a $995 software without a datafeed for that you've got to pay an additional $400, want a DB update to record dividend changes that is another $450 per year. I might have to go there if no one else can offer. I met Gene Weisman-liked him a lot but I was on the floor for a while and since I started in the last 80's the market has become more efficient wherein arbitrage and pricing inefficiencies used to be money maker. Now since the spreads are tighter, the opportunity shifts. Admittedly it is harder since you have to have some directional call. No one will trade an intrument unless opportunity is present-look at the options volume- it is huge.
Optrack is such a relic plus they charge $400 monthly for it BUT it is real time as opposed to Opscan's 15 min delayed.
give me any example, of what you guys looking for, and i show you, how fast a search can be programmed. and best of all-it not going to cost you hundreds of dollars. if you looking for real time data, it will cost you $10 per month, that what CBOE charged for it . ))))))))) so far i only can see talk about nothing...... dude in first post did not say anything about what exactly criteria was? b.w.- there is no such software for options, on which you can back test your strategies, because nobody have a historical data for options. I do have it. And I can test any strategy. Just show me any profitable idea. So far I did not see any. That why I back to stocks and leave options (at least for now). But if any of you can show me something really interesting, I will be happy to help with all my knowledge and data, that I have.
Hi Bob111. The criteria I am thinking about deals with putting on calendar spreads. Several elements need to be present in order for me to consider putting the spread on. Here they are. 1. Bid asked spread must be less than 15 cents 2. Volume or open interest must be at a certain level so when I unwind the spread I won't get whacked on the spread 3. Implied vol of front month must be greater than next to front month by a level (example : program will flag stock if ATM IV of Sept =50% and ATM IV of Nov is 45% 5. IV must be close to HV to protect myself from Vega implosion 6. IV must currently be at most in the 40% percentile due to long If that can be done, email or PM and let us talk, for I have a couple more ideas about options. Thanks
Optionstar has a decent spread scanner which allows you to scan a list up to twenty stocks at a time for the best implied volatilities, theoreticals, and greeks and recommend spread strategies for each. You can instantly generate over 500 spreads for any underlying stock symbol. You can build and compare covered calls, and credit/debit spreads for a list of 50 stock symbols. http://www.optionstar.com/ss