Tos traders, you may or may not be aware of a service TOS has with a Dr. Epps who also trades the Iron Condors on SPX, XEO, and others. This system is traded for you, not my cup of tea!! That being said, you can see his results posted on his web site, Wise Options.com. Pretty interesting stuff.
Coach, I added some 1260/1265 call hedges today. Are you looking at putting on any call fly hedges right now?
No FLY hedges, I put on straight call hedges which I rolled into bull call spreads for no cost. The FLYs are not the best choice, I only do it when the cost of long options/spreads are too high for me. It is completely subjective I know, but given the movement in the market, I am avoiding FLYs right now.
Coach: I'm curious as to why you hedged with the SPY and not with the XSP. I'm looking at putting on a hedge and it looks like the XSP is less expensive than the approximately equivalent SPY (i.e. 127 XSP versus the 127 SPY).
Now that the VIX is trading near single digits, I wonder if this strategy is still viable. Is there some point at which it just doesn't pay to sell option premium?
George, I think I offered an explanation for why this strategy might be viable for some even with low IV here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=874893#post874893 Momoney.
Andy, Put calendars are a possibility. Looking at diagonals and back spreads too. Might even slap on a three month straddle or something if the price is right. I'm mulling over the "options"...more interested in trying to capture volatility than direction at the moment but who knows I may even throw some directional bias in there for a change.[EDIT] Sorry Phil. Off-topic. Momoney.
I've found the same thing...in watching over a period of time its like the market gets "reasonable" the last 5 minutes of the day!