Writing options for a living

Discussion in 'Options' started by torontoman, Jul 28, 2005.

  1. NP, you were both being bad :D
     
    #211     Aug 1, 2005
  2. sle

    sle

    You think insulting me would change something? I was merely making a point that in general options are priced well with regards to the information in the marketplace, disregarding distributional assumptions.

    Black Swan events or anything else you want to call them are an issue with estimating kurtosis, which is extremely hard to do. As I said before in this thread, trading kurtosis is a very difficult game and is something that I would avoid doing at all costs. Now, since as a marketmaker, I am forced to make decisions regarding the wings, my preference has allways been being long the call/reciever skew and short the put/payer skew (in the rates world), but I do not actively sell or buy far OTM options.

    Did I in any shape or form advocated selling options? Nope. I was merely making a point (again) that distributional assumption has nothing to do with efficient pricing in liquid products, it would only change you hedging approach. You can also add that there is no true market makers in the current markets and every trader is forced to take a market view. The trick is that MMs have a better knowledge of the flows in the market, so they tend to do a bit better.
     
    #212     Aug 1, 2005
  3. sle

    sle

    a spanking is due, i presume?

    ps. a coworker retiered today, so i am drunk at 6 pm on Monday. Can't even think of what's gonna happend tomorrow..
     
    #213     Aug 1, 2005
  4. No spanking after my "pulsating" comment... Don't want to appear too metrosexual.

    6pm?! All Manhattanites are lightweights.
     
    #214     Aug 1, 2005
  5. Maverick74

    Maverick74

    Holy shit. F*ck this thread is active. Freaking 4 to 5 pages of since I left. I there are actually more posts in here then in chit chat the last few days. What the hell is going on?

    I don't even know where to start so I won't. LOL. I'll just comment that the CME study someone posted earlier was the biggest bunch of nonsense I have ever seen. What a joke. I can't believe people do studies on the percentage of options that expire worthless as if that means something. I expect Wade Cook to do these studies, not the CME. Oy vey.
     
    #215     Aug 1, 2005
  6. Maverick brings up a good point.

    How is it possible that all those options expire worthless? How can that happen? If IBM is trading at 100. all call options from 30 to 99 are worth something at expiration day. All put options from 180 to 101 are worth something on expiration day. So why this high percentage of options expiring worthless?..or am I an idiot.
     
    #216     Aug 1, 2005
  7. sle

    sle

    How could you say this! If it comes from good people at CME, it's gotta be good. It's like with wine - if it's got a cork, it gotta be good.
     
    #217     Aug 1, 2005
  8. It sounds like you are assuming that there is an equal distribution of open interest across all strike prices which isnt the case.
     
    #218     Aug 1, 2005
  9. Excuse my ignorance.

    So, when they say "75% of options expire worthless." What are they talking about? The actual security OR the open interest.
     
    #219     Aug 1, 2005
  10. That's news to me--and good news.

    The home team does not always win!
     
    #220     Aug 1, 2005