It seems that the Google earnings were the perfect opportunity for a long strangle, especially with expiration being the next day. Although the Apple earnings would not be as good an opportunity as Google was... maybe buying both May call and put options, but out of the money, might be a decent opportunity...without as much of the cost associated with the long straddle. Obviously the danger being Apple does not move much after earnings. I had several of my customers clean up with long straddles on Google last thursday and a few made big just being long way out of the money calls, but with options expiration being weeks away and a lot of time and volatilty value priced into options on Apple, does anyone think that a long strangle would be a better deal now?
Actually the straddle in GOOG was a better set up not the strangle. Since there was only one day till expiration the straddle was, in a relative basis to other earnings plays that have more time left on the options, a better play. I think you'll find historically buying strangles or straddles by themselves for earnings is a loser. If you're going to be long gamma going into the number more often then not you'd better be crafty at trading the underlying vs the gamma. For every big winner you get there are dozens more losers. Either way its sort of moot, since its pointless to sit around and discuss what you or someone else did after the fact.
We all know implied will pop a bit more heading into the number. The question is always how much will they get pummeled and how quickly after the numer. The problem is there's a lot more vega in the options when they have a full month left on them