sold a ten lot of the 15 puts at .50; sold a ten lot of the 12 call for 2.70 which was a nice pick off, don't feel bad for the Pcoast though, they should have filled me on the ten lot of 15s which was bid by two other exchanges.
I enjoy your journal posts. Please keep them coming. I don't really understand what you're doing, though. Could you recommend a couple of books that would help? Thanks.
Some of the stuff I do is covered in books but much of it isn't. You will learn some of the mechanics of options, but there won't be a very good explanation of how to use synthetics to gain extra edge. They are mostly written for the point of view of the customer which is expected to hit bids and take offers. A couple that actually get fairly in depth are Natenbergs Volatility & Option Pricing and Cottle's Options: Perceptio/Deception. The latter is the most in depth book on actual trading of options. Natenbergs offers an intermediate look at volatility and pricing, hence the title. There is also, of course, McMillan's "Options as a strategic investment" which is the standerd beginner book. Most of this stuff I learned on the floor. An explantion of one of the things I did above is the sell of ten lot of fifteen puts and selling the 12 call. What I did in this case is effectively sell the 15 call for .70. Right now, the 12 calls are more or less stock. By selling stock on a 1 to 1 basis against the put, I sybthetically sold the 15 call for .70. The market at that time for the 15 call was .60 @ .65. I sold the call for five cents more than what it would cost me to buy it and ten cents more than if I sold it at the bid..
whoa, what was that? Bought stock against it at 14.06 and then bought back 10 for 2.55 but the stock tanked and sold .02 stock.
I had a much longer post for today but it was erased. Anyways, traded an emini today for 1.25 and sold 1000 csco and 20 of the 12 calls.