Valuable IV Rank thinkscript for TOS

Discussion in 'Options' started by smile, Dec 19, 2013.

  1. Brighton

    Brighton

    FYI, if you can tolerate the ads (I think they go away if you pay), ivolality.com has a similar feature that I occasionally use for a group of high-flyers. It uses their 30 day IV index; I'm not a T.O.S. customer so I don't know what data they manipulate for ranking. Seems like it would have to be some sort of 'constant maturity' measure (if that's the right name).

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    #11     Dec 19, 2013
  2. vanv0029

    vanv0029

    I actually think the IV percentage rank for a particular company is quite a good
    indicator. Although one needs to also look at absolute volatility compared to
    the market (or just absolute to make enough per trade). Tasty Trade (Sosnoff)
    advocates a system that mostly makes money from time decay and probability
    of option touches. Tasty Trade does have a research department. Mostly
    their conclusions is that high IV is almost always too high so it is better to fade it.

    Obviously, there is a different type of high volatility for biotech binary events and low
    volume and low priced stocks. I watch the shows and use the Bob recommendations
    to help my trading. I am way too rational so the Tasty Trade show has given
    me a sort of old Chicago pit environment to try to change my trading with lots
    of viewpoints, lots of ideas, lots of irrational methods, etc.

    Tasty Trade's current recommendations to fade high IV in commodities such
    as NG are totally stupid, but for stocks without fundamental commodity properties,
    I think the ideas work.
     
    #12     Dec 19, 2013
  3. Maverick74

    Maverick74

    If you don't normalize for price the reading is absolutely worthless. Garbage in/garbage out.
     
    #13     Dec 19, 2013
  4. It's pointless and I am tired of seeing Sosnoff whore himself and ICs. He's also in the latest LOTR film.
     
    #14     Dec 19, 2013

  5. Tastytrade teaches to only use underlyings that are deemed *tradable*. People that follow this method of trading would avoid names that don’t meet the *tradable* conditions regardless of the IV Rank. These requirements are high volume of the stock, high volume and open interest of the option chain, and tight bid/ask spread of the options. What comes out on the other side of that usually only falls to about a handful of underlyings at any one time and your usually cycle back to the same names. This is my style/method of trading and it works. This indicator lends itself to this style/method of trading.

    Most Biotech stock (from what I’ve seen) have B/A spreads you can drive a Mack Truck through. Tastytrade, specifically Tom and Tony always warn of staying away from those (selling Vol) due to the illusion you have commented on. I’m not too sure about the other example you give so I can’t comment on that (Risk Arb).
     
    #15     Dec 19, 2013
  6. piezoe

    piezoe

    Mav, we've found something we can agree on!
     
    #16     Dec 19, 2013
  7. xandman

    xandman

    Not Bad. Some folks just work better with visuals. However, it isn't a fast way to generate ideas. I was gonna offer the forum my yahoo/excel/hoadley etf dashboard with conditional formatting but was getting reliability issues before I flew out for vacation.

    I like the ivolatility search that Brighton presented. Can anybody screenshot a fancy livevol SQL query?
     
    #17     Dec 19, 2013
  8. xandman

    xandman



    Actually, I have shorted a few naked calls past my sleep point on biotechs.

    Why does biotech vol remain at elevated levels thru period n expiration, when the expected announcement is not expected until n+1 ?
     
    #18     Dec 19, 2013
  9. Brighton

    Brighton

    Selling vol in NG is tempting now, but it's not for under-capitalized newbies. I visited Big Mike's Trading over the weekend to glance at the huge option selling thread and read some painful stories about guys who sold 2 delta (.02) calls a few days or a week earlier. They were hurtin' for certain. If they held on, they felt better after the weekend but the pain returned in a major way today.

    From what I've seen, more than a few of those guys are playing follow the leader (the thread starter, Ron) and selling large quantities of less than 4 delta options. They talk about (low) delta and margin incessantly, but almost never about IV. It's a chronicle of a death foretold...
     
    #19     Dec 19, 2013
  10. I’m not sure what you mean by normalizing price and what it has to do with using a ranking of Implied Vols within the TOS platform for a particular underlying. Not saying it isn’t important but I’ve done quick a bit of trades where the IVR as >50%, and yes the price was still gyrating around, but once it stabilized/settled down, the Imp Vol (and IVR for that matter) dropped like a rock. The requirement here is staying small in contracts relative to my capital size and giving myself time to be right (going out to the next month if the front month/time period has less than a certain amount of days). I’ve done this throughout the year in TSLA and currently working it the same way in TWTR. Just a different method of trading.

    Going a little further in an example, if by chance a price gets to the strike that I'm short (whether call or put), I immediately sell the corresponding call/put creating a straddle (no additional capital required and sense I stayed small in the number of contracts anyway, I’m well below in margin requirement relative to overall capital). If price continues I buy back the other side and move up/down a strike or two. Yes it can get messy, but I'm taking money off the table as the underlying yo-yo's around. Yes I've had calls below price and puts above. But once price settles for a few days, and based on the position I currently have and what I've already taken off the table, I then determine if it’s worth keeping on or not. Yeah, it sounds like a mess but I'm amazed on the fact that it worked a number of times for me in TSLA alone (different occurrences as it moved from the 80's [when I got involved in it] to 190's). Hard to explain but the segments on tastytrade title "Anatomy of a Trade" do a better job of explaining how to stay mechanical when naked positions go against you. This is where I've picked up this style of trading.
     
    #20     Dec 19, 2013