Yen (FXY) - Dollar: Bet On Yen Closes; Euro Bet Opens

Discussion in 'Trading' started by livevol_ophir, Feb 17, 2010.

  1. livevol_ophir

    livevol_ophir ET Sponsor

    FXY is trading 109.02.

    The company has traded over 24,186 options today in the first two hours on total daily average option volume of just 2,370. The largest trade has been 8000 Mar 100 puts (bot) / Mar 105 puts (sold) / Mar 110 calls (bot). This trade has accounted for 24,000 of the contracts today. The Company Tab and Day's biggest trades snapshots are included (in the article).

    The Options Tab snapshot more clearly shows the trades - note the relatively large open interest on the lines that traded (in the article).

    This is closing on at least some of those lines. As I 've shown before, multi-leg trades can more easy to understand if they are broken into pieces. This trade can be seen as:

    (1) Buy March 110 Calls for 1.15
    (2) Sell the March 105/100 put spread @ 0.25
    Total position cost = 8000 * 100 * ($0.90) = $720,000.

    So buy upside calls and fund it with a sale of a put spread. Clearly a bullish trade (or the closing of a bearish trade in this case). If FXY goes up, the dollar goes down relative to the Yen. Someone is paying $720,000 to close a bullish position in the dollar after this recent run up relative to the Euro. The PnL chart on March expo. is included (in the article).

    As an opening order, max loss is $4.7 million and this breaks even when FXY hits $110.90.

    The skew chart for FXY is included (in the article).

    Currency skew is usually just a parabola - unlike equity option skew. In this case you can see an upward tilt - pushing the probability priced into the options up that FXY goes up (or dollar goes down relative to the Yen).

    Interestingly the skew in the dollar vs the Euro has been showing the opposite recently. You can read that blog in the article.

    The Charts Tab snapshot (6 months) is included below (in the article). The bottom portion is the vol chart: IV30&#8482 v. HV20&#8482. Note also the spike in FXY at the end of last year to the 115 range.

    This is trade analysis, not a recommendation.

    Details, trades, prices, charts, vols, skews here:
    http://livevol.blogspot.com/2010/02/fxy.html