Option selling for premium

Discussion in 'Options' started by John9999, Mar 3, 2018.

  1. They assume allocating your whole account yo those trades. So both 5% gain and 80% loss are on the whole account. This is how they calculate their P/L.

    But what many people are missing is that if you gain 5% 10 times and then lose 50%, you are not back to even. You are down significantly.

    Of course if you allocate only small portion of your account to the weekly trades and don't compound, you might be fine. But this is something those subscription services don't teach you.
     
    #131     Mar 12, 2018
  2. "on track" for 27% this year....it's march.
     
    #132     Mar 12, 2018
  3. Update. Now on track for 32% this year! It’s called projection.
     
    #133     Mar 13, 2018
  4. The unlucky option sellers who's puts expired this week have their years gains wiped out but I guess rolling it will make it better. but the probability was only 5%. This is why you dont sell 0.05 puts. If you were lucky to not have your puts expire this week your probably over 100 points away from your BE
     
    #134     Mar 23, 2018
  5. tommcginnis

    tommcginnis

    Eh? While respecting your thoughts on the matter, they are very much prisoner to your very-low estimation of moving risk/positions - it's a lot easier than you think.
     
    #135     Mar 24, 2018
  6. what do you mean moving risk? if anyone sold a put naked most or all of the capital is locked up in margin. Unless their trading a million dollar account. The other thing about selling 0.05 options at least in $SPX it must expire because they trade in 0.05 increments. This strategy can work for some time but again my point is this isnt a beginners strategy.

     
    #136     Mar 24, 2018
  7. Hahaha.
     
    #137     Mar 24, 2018

  8. Thanks Kim. So in an example where you sell an option for $3, take $2 of those to buy a different option. Both expire worthless. What would the % gain be listed as? Its just weird because you didnt really come out of pocket anything. Thanks.
     
    #138     Mar 24, 2018
  9. tommcginnis

    tommcginnis

    Neither of us is recommending selling naked 5¢ SPX options. "Beginner" or not, it's just *dumb*.

    That said, for any short options bought back at 50¢ (a 10x whack), whether you could buy it back, sell the 25¢-er on bottom, and another 25¢ on top -- that's your choice. But you just cut that position's delta risk in half (roughly). If instead you to buy insurance below that short at 25¢, and sold a 25¢ spread on the other side of the market to pay for it, you've just cut your margin while swinging to revenue neutral. Orrrrrrr, If instead you bought the 50¢ option and went out in time to sell spreads, you cut margin, you get further from the market, and you can lose a little, go revenue neutral, or seek to put some (revenue) in your pocket, as is your want. "Watch the Whipsaw, Brother!"

    I map my positions each week by strike and by expiry, and strive to know *exactly* who gets moved first, and where they're going (based on news/fundamentals/market-technicals). I have the inventory mapped via the Black Scholes Merton PDE, and don't really know what I would do without this underappreciated operationalization of what people glibly call The Greeks. And unless the day gets really crazy (Groundhog Day, for example), I have this picture in my mind at all times. Got to!
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2018
    #139     Mar 24, 2018
    caacapital likes this.
  10. yobo

    yobo

    This has never happened to me. I sold 122 puts on YY last week and the stock closed at 121.85.

    I was only assigned two out of the 10 contracts I sold. I thought assignment was required but apparently not and the buyer of my puts apparently wanted to be short the stock this morning.

    Bad for them, YY is trading up to 125. Anybody ever not had stock put to them when the put option expires in the money?
     
    #140     Mar 26, 2018