Ouch. Sorry to hear. Consider another broker, or talking seriously to TOS. IB released all my margin from Oct index shorts this morning, at the opening of the market. Thus, I was able to sell any leftover positions. You should be able to do that also. If not, closing Thurs afternoon becomes mandatory. Best of luck next time. Mark
Well this was a little position to test something, but in a bigger sense I am testing using the Cross Flys on the SPX and the initial modelling looks promising. Nice R/R with little or no haircut and lots of room to select strikes...
Sure, but a loss at the mean of the implied distro, which can become significant with a drop in vols. I don't understand the shift in methodology from short gamma to long gamma/vega. You went from selling synthetic barrier options to buying duration backspreads.
here you go. Short calendar on the call side + short calendar on the put side. Long gamma, short vega. Very muted risk if goog opened flat due to vega gains, and nice reward if goog moves as it did due to your gammas. Much better bet than a long backspread ahead of vol crush. Just my 2 cents.
Mark, I placed my trades with ameritrades. Sometimes they released the margin on Friday, and today they don't. I just opened an account with TOS with the intent to test the diagonal strategy but there is not enough fund for naked writing. I am going to close my ameritrade account and transfer all to TOS. The talk with the ameritrade staff really upset me. I can't think properly now. Just pray and hope.
While I'm late to the discussion I have to say I am shocked that set was so high! Especially given that CAT was down 10% on the open. Also very glad I closed my 1365 call spread yesterday :eek:
I get it when I am short gamma and I get it when I am long gamma.... sigh.... I should just assume that everyone does not like any position I have on. In all serious, doesn't EVERY position have a weak Greek somewhere. It is how you apply the strategy that makes the difference. The GOOG was just a fun bet that cost me very little. The modelling on the SPX though is much better so lets focus on that instead of the GOOG play. I got to be more careful what I post lol. My real use of cross month FLYs is to play the index over a wider profit one. I like to diversify my approaches to the market depending on what I see. I still have not seen a valid criticism of going long gamma and vega on the index when we are at historical vol lows... Also I still am doing credit spreads as evidenced by the nice SPX one that is expiring worthless today. I am up about 25% on risk margin with the credit spreads so I will never abandon those!
Is the $9.00 the price for the position to open? Isn't the profit about the same when you compare the two. After all mine is a long calendar financed by a short calendar so the profit profile of a double calendar and the double cross fly look very similar except for the middle of the graph. I do agree on the muted risk if GOOG opened flat and vols dropped.