I had a few stock positions but wasn't short any puts. I typically trade volatile stocks that can lose 20% almost routinely, so a 10% market drop isn't very significant to me. I just don't let the stock price get much more than one strike price away from the put strike.
By buying it back. I usually sell something else to offset it. But if need be, I'll take a loss. If I get 50 cents on the initial sell and it moves against me, I might roll down with the same expiration. I'll lose around 30, maybe 35 cents of the original premium, but still have some profit. If it continues to go down, I can roll out to next week, so I've now come down 100 points and I'm still in the black. Try doing that with stock alone. If it keeps going down, buy it back, take a loss and move on.
@robertSt, I really appreciate all your posts on this thread. You are one of the few who is willing to describe the framework of a trading system and is not trying to sell us something. It gives me something to explore. Thank you. What you posted is not exactly new, over the years, I read quite a few posts on similar techniques. To make money, it is not as simple as you describe, some correct opinions of the underlying, timing, filtering and selection of the options are needed to come out ahead. The devil is in the details. For those interested, they have to find their own details because we are all different. I know several folks (non ETer) who exclusively write options for a living and make a very good living doing it. However, I couldn't make a living using their trading frameworks. Instead I make a living betting with the bull market, long calls short puts. Best regards,
This selloff is yielding some juicy premiums indeed. Consider Bank of America, BAC, currently at 29.34. Next Friday's 29 put is paying 89 cents. That's 3% of the stock value, $890 on 10 contracts.
I thought the whole point of your strategy is selling OTMish puts on high vol names. If you wanna sell outs on BAC why not just sell puts on SPX? ps. BAC is down 4.9% today - selling tomorrow’s put for 3% sound like a good risk/reward to you?