Baozi The DTE selection may seem strange to you but we have clients interested in those types of trades, having a long term put and selling near term puts. Yes, the platform does allow for backtesting under specific conditions. What were you thinking? We have technical indicators (MACD ATR RSI for example) and volatility indicators (constant maturity IV, strike IV slope, for example) and ratios of the above (IV30/IV30-SMA30 - implied volatility at the 30 day divided by the moving average of that). We can also run the long put and short put strategy separately and apply the conditions and combine the strategies to observe the combined statistics. You could time the short put separately than the long put if you wish.
Diagonals are calendarized verticals. When buying diagonals, make sure that the debit paid does not exceed the width of the strikes. Since theres two expirations you can use the width of the spread as a guideline for a reasonable profit expectation. Ex: Short DEC 105 Call Long Jan 100 Call Spread: $5 Debit: $3 Est. ProfitPotential: $5-$3=$2 50% of the width is a good target to pay. Unless you're doing deep-ITM covered call/covered put diagonals, then you'd want to pay around 75% the width of the strikes. It all depends on the situation really.
The correlation of 60 day short put strategy returns and 555 day is -0.86. The correlation for 60 day and 120 day returns is -0.91. I would not call that uncorrelated positions, however it is true the strategies have very different greeks, i.e. vega and gamma. We cover US equity options including indexes like VIX and SPX.
Almost .. only 1 strike is calendarised The Jan +100c / -Dec 105c diagonal can be dissected into 2 component parts, say ... Dec +100c / Dec -105c vertical ... Dec -100c / Jan +100c calendar You can then evaluate component parts ... often reveals embedded risk that you don't particular like as is the case with many put BWB's
"Almost .. only 1 strike is calendarised" ...and the other strike lives in a magical place where time does not exist???
?? I'm very confused. Are you saying that the short put p+l change is approximately 90% correlated to the daily p+l of the long put??
This makes sense with a slowly moving market with no surprises, yet I think this is only half of the picture. Checking a bit with the simulator, and with all the parameters staying the same (and under the unrealistic expectation of flat volatility), your risk/reward ratio undergoes massive changes. 60D/90D= 1:1.37 (risk 1 to make 1.37) 60D/180D=1.1:1 (risk 1.1 to make 1) 60D/360D=1.6:1 60D/540D=1.95:1 I think there is a point in which the disadvantages of going far out with expiration dates outweigh the advantages, as the short becomes like the small bird on the back of the elephant. If spot goes past the short on the upside you just cap your profits there. If it goes down it's the same as being just long the far date.
That's why its called that lol.. if there wasn't 1 strike with a different term strike it would be a normal vertical, but since 1 strike is in another month we thus calendarize it