Unfortunately you are just making things up as you go along. Your revisionist history has conveniently erased your recent losses from short premium positions.
CLOSED BELOW 10!!!! sounds like an excuse to drink a beer or something "WEEEW, yeah VIX!" **crickets**
Tell me BM, do you hang out here for the sole purpose of attacking everyone that does better than you to let you feel better personally? If so, please go find another dung pile to play with son. I have little time for your games. But please know that I take all your attacking of anything I post as a compliment. You know the old adage - "you can show not author a better compliment than to read his works.? You must read every post I write in any topic area, After all, your committed perspiration to this labor of personal attention is direct evidence of either a great love of me or addiction to the attention of being brusquely swatted away or feelings of self loathing inferiority. Though its hard to fathom which it is with you I suspect the latter most case. That's a pity since most in this forum seem civil and mature - but I am sure a few kids get in here. Maybe its time we suggested the board sponsors to install one of those nanny age verifier services here? Hmmm... But while you have my attention I want to understand something. Are you are under the grand illusion that you can conjure up a profit and loss ledger of my own personally trading account? You act as if a prior periods loss has any bearing on the objective statements I have made here? Yeah, like anyone else I do lose now and then. So what? But its just bizarre and highly irrational or childish of you to act like you have personal knowledge of what my profit-loss is and what my entire portfolio position is. Perhaps a good shot of penicillin and a change from deviant and unsafe social practises will cure your condition. Not that whatever it was you are trying to say is even sideways relevant to anything I have stated, but I want to clarify the record. What I mentioned here is factual and consistent with my own personal trading style. In fact I am a highly adaptive trader and never stick to just "one system". I like to mix it up. But I DO have specific cash objectives for each month. That means I do sell premium as a core strategy. What you clearly fail to comprehend is the not so subtle difference between magnitude of my current positions (reading another post of mine) with respect to how I have traded in times of higher VIX. I usually play moderately large numbers of credit spread contracts (up to 800 contracts on SPX) when VIX is 12 or higher. But when VIX is under 12 I play much smaller positions (e.g. on the order of 50-200 contracts). I consider this period a "marking bet/investment" since its the only way to average out a long run of consecutive wins or losses. Note that a smaller short position size and lower premium reduces total monthly income from my normal short premium positions and its harder to meet cash income objectives in these kinds of periods. However, to compensate for lower VIX-premium periods I open up additional debit spread vertical positions to play on a smaller directional expectation to gain the advantage of cheap vega. I also count on and usually succeed in getting real-volatility induced premium (not expected volatility per VIX) during short counter-expectation runs when VIX is often way out to lunch on what specific option strikes are willing to pay. Even cheap gamma credit traders can do quite well in low vol periods by opportunistic legging in during short situational implied volatility spikes. Comprehende? But I really want to know what your fundamental problem is? Are you somehow jealous that I can almost fully recover one losing month out of 12 so quickly and adapt to the market and STILL continue to trade and profit with cheap but smaller gamma positions? If you have a personal problem with me then send me a private message. I am not selling you anything nor even want you as a client. I am only sharing some of my insights with others and to learn some other perspectives - not trying to sell anything. Continue with your childish attacks and tirades and I am just going to put you on my ignore list. Then what are you going to do to get attention buy my cheap gamma and lose 85% of the time? It's clear you are some-one's "dopple" operating under a fictitious name. My advise - quit while are ahead. TS
Observation over the past few days. VIX has been dropping, to below 10 today. The Feb07 VIX futures contract has went up from 128.50/129 last Thursday to 130.70 today. Feb contact owners must be looking for a bounce to price them up when the VIX is falling.
wow! could someone tell me how much would cost to trade 800 contact on spx, roughly. isn't one contract of optione has to time 100 to equivalent the underlay equity? :eek:
If one us trading 10 point credit spreads, 50 points above and beyond with an Iron Condor (e.g. short 1450 calls and long 1460 calls and short 1350 puts and long 1340 puts) its not as bad as you might think since the longs limit the total risk. Conventional margin requirements on a 10 point spread are $1,000 per spread position (10 x $100) if they are fully paired. So if for example if one writers 200 shorts at the above strikes on both the call side and the put side and also purchases 200 longs on each side the total margin at risk is $400,000 (200 x $1,000 x 2). But the truth is the better brokers half this margin requirement since only one side of the condor can lose in any period if held to expiration. In that case margin at risk reduces to $200,000. But basically it all depends on your broker and the type of margin agreement they are operating to and how wide your spread is. Some people go further out in strike (greater than 2 sigmas) and open up the spread to 15 - 20 points. In those cases margin becomes pretty intense. Also, you never want to "day trade" with short positions on the SPX since if you go in and out of a short a single time in the same day during a rapid market reversal you will trigger a day trader margin call on a percentage of the raw underlying value. With SPX at 1400 that margin call can easily get into the millions of dollars on even moderately sized positions. Flying uncovered and naked on on the SPX in a short position (something I'd never willingly do) is even more adventurous and not for the faint of heart. TS
Yet you manage to write pages of garbage in response.....yawn. You don't actually think anyone pays attention to your lengthy flights of fancy do you? It's clear that you're a rank amateur. Nothing wrong with that, just don't come on here extolling the virtues of buying premium when VIX is low when you practice the exact opposite and document it too. I'd bet my left nut that you hadn't even heard of VIX prior to a week ago. Now you post here implying that you "tend" to buy premium when VIX is low. You're a liar and you've been caught.