I have bought options for several years. Plain vanilla puts/calls. However I am seeing that I need to become more attuned to IV and to use low/high IV strategies rather than simply buying calls or puts, especially when IV is high. I am trying to research high and low IV strategies but the resources I have found so far focus on a delta neutral approach. I am looking for an approach which can be used when I do have a bias long or short but want to benefit from high IV. I would prefer not to look at naked selling. After finding a menagerie of strategies like Chicken Iron Condor, Jade Lizard, Broken Wing Butterfly and Iron Fly I think I ended up more confused than when I started. So... Is there a good resource that would lay out high IV strategies where there is a directional bias on the underlying vehicle? Even better than that, is there a platform/application/website which one could use to screen potential strategies. For example, I could identify the underlying vehicle and propose a hypothetical move and it would suggest a suitable trade, taking into account IV. Many thanks,
https://www.poweropt.com/store/subscribe.aspx?pid=po_sub The smartserach scanner will let you search the options market on any criteria.
Many thanks but unless I am mistaken this allows me to search a universe of underlying vehicles and find options trades that meet specific criteria. I am trying to look at a specific underlying vehicle and have strategies suggested to me based upon that vehicles current IV and my directional bias. I will certainly reach out to them to see if they can do what I need.
What you are trying to do is what I've been doing forever in the soft's pits and now am implementing in the non-softs since I am now off floor. Check out my site..edgequestllc.com. Most scanners, systems in this space trade based on skew harvesting, iv/hv ,etc .. few on the prob distro of the underlying per John Bender's method-save for bespoke systems that are not publicly available..
Thanks guys but it seems PowerOpt wont do what I need. I had a tuition session with them Friday PM and they agreed that they allow a search by various criteria, IV, greeks etc but not what I detailed above. I played with IB's Strategy Lab, Probability Lab and Volatility Lab and again they provide a set of tools that provide suggested strategies based upon a scenario BUT that does not take into account low/high IV environment, at least as far as I can see.
If your forecast is for higher volatility, trade calendars. If for lower, trade flys. If you can't forecast volatility, but can forecast direction, trade both at same time. If you can't forecast neither direction, nor volatility, find another hobby or trade sim till you can forecast.