Option trading with DanPickUp

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DanPickUp

Well-Known Member
#31
Hi

OI will be looked at when arriving at subject number seven: Choosing the strike levels.

Now subject number five: Choosing the strategy.

The universe of option trading strategies is huge. So where to start and how do I choose any of this strategies? How do I know I did the right thing?

I am very clear, that this subject could easily fill a full thread with many posts. Have a look once at the book:The bible of option strategies from Guy Cohen and you will see how many strategies are only explained in that book. I can tell you for sure: There are many more option strategies around.

The biggest option industry exists in the USA, as the possibilities offered from the Exchanges there to the option traders are incredible. Many strategies are not possible to trade in India because of the limited offers from the Bombay Exchange to the Indian option traders and so let us stay with what can/could be done.

Now choosing the strategy we want to implement:

Main thing to look at is the Vega (HV or SV) in the market. There are different ways to do so. We can use specific volatility indicators like Bollinger Bands, Option volatility indicator, ATP which is Average Traded Price or Standard Deviation Channels and some other tools. All this are indicators which visualize volatility in the market. Do not confuse these volatility indicators with other indicators. As I made once a thread about indicators, you will see in the following link a list of indicators which are used most from this trading community and I specified them for what to use: http://www.traderji.com/technical-a...nly-one-indicator-one-would-9.html#post632987

An other way to spot vola: If we are very familiar with one market, we should be able to see the change in vola in the chart. As told in this post http://www.traderji.com/options/66266-option-trading-danpickup-3.html#post641417, volatility is shown in each bar. If they get longer and longer, you know that volatility in your traded market is getting bigger and if they get smaller and smaller, you know that vola is low. If you have a problem to spot that, measure the price range. If the price range in a certain time frame gets bigger, you know that vola rises and if the price range gets smaller, you know that the vola declines. Very simple, isnt it?

Now let me stay simple and give you these fixed rules:

Low vola in the market means buying strategies.

High vola in the market means selling strategies.

What does this mean? Can I not buy an option when market has high volatility? In India I not can sell naked options so what should I do?

Buying just an option is no strategy! Even than, we will have a look at that in the next post.

With strategy we mean an option trade which includes more than one leg. In strategically option trading we speak many times from legs instead of options. It is the same. So if some one says: I leg in she/he says: I enter the trade option by option. That technique is for more advanced option traders as it needs a good understanding of the current market situation and in some case a very precisely planning of each step from this strategically trade.

Now what are buying strategies?

Buying strategies are strategies in which we mainly go long. Pure directional traders would just buy a call or a put. Strategically traders could buy a long strangle or a long straddle. If you are not familiar with those terms, use in the future this link: http://www.investopedia.com/dictionary/#axzz1lbpPh6W0

Keep this link in your browsers bookmark list. It is a dictionary about financial terms. Just type in the word you not understand and in most cases you are leaded to the right explanation.

Now why do we buy option when vola is low? As you know as I already explained it: Vega has a direct impact of the price of an option and low vega means in general the pricing of the option is cheaper. If we buy an option, we take a certain risk and if we can buy the option with a cheaper price, we lower our risk. That is the main reason why we divide in buying and selling strategies.

Follow up post will be made on the subject.

DanPickUp
 

DanPickUp

Well-Known Member
#32
Hi

What are selling strategies?

Selling strategies are strategies we mainly go short. As option prices are high, we try to profit from this fact. If the decline in Vega comes, the sold options will loose quicker on value and we want to make profit from that. This mainly is a vega game and less a directional game. If we both have at once: Decline in vega and the market goes in our direction, we have nice profits. As we sell expensive options in a high vega market, we should/could have the odds in our favor to our goods. The same vice versa for the low entry price and faster add of value to the option if market moves in our favor.

As directional trader you could sell a naked put or call and as strategically traders you could implement a short strangle or a short straddle. (***)

Just an information to the more informed option traders here: Be informed that I know many more strategies for both cases, specially also synthetics of any kind. As this is a mix of a learner thread for different levels, I try to not make it to complicate, so that not so experienced option traders can follow this thread. That means that I will stay for the moment only with this two simple plain strategies and in later posts will add some more strategies.

(***)For the newbies: ATTENTION.

Let me tell you that and read it word by word: Be very careful with naked option selling! It is dangerous as the loss you could face could be huge if you do not know how to handle such trades and situations!! Read the following two posts to get a bigger picture on option selling:

http://www.traderji.com/options/305...g-strategy-option-spreads-116.html#post459952

http://www.traderji.com/options/305...g-strategy-option-spreads-121.html#post478132

Finally: Selling short options in India is not as easy as in other countries. Inform your self about that and if any of you readers feel to comment on that with a clear post, she/he is welcome to do so.

Now with all that comments, you should definitely have a certain idea about the importance of analyzing vega before choosing the option strategy and then combine this two things.

Today is the 07.02.2012. Now let us find one market with low vola and let us find one with high vola. If you not have any scanner, you just go through your whole markets you have data of. Time we can spend, as we want to make money with that stuff. :)

First example with low vola: Feeder Cattle with the daily bar chart. Vola is on the bottom line from the option vola indicator and the market seems to be on top. Some thing is going to happen here soon. Let us watch what it will be:

http://i44.tinypic.com/2nuj9c5.png

Second example with high vola: Natural Gas with the daily bar chart. Vola is on top and market seems to be on the bottom line. Also here: Some thing is going to happen in the coming days, so let us also watch this market.

http://i44.tinypic.com/2z4efci.png

Let us stay for the moment with the plain vega indicator to get a feeling for it and please do not interrupt the flow of the posts with any charts with what ever indicators, as we later will add some more information to this charts. Thank you.

Fifth subject closed :)

DanPickUp
 

LivetoTrade

Well-Known Member
#33
Now let me stay simple and give you these fixed rules:

Low vola in the market means buying strategies.

High vola in the market means selling strategies.
Dan, seeking additional clarification -

Low vola - on any side for buying? Can it be Call or Put?

Don't Puts generally have a high vola than Calls?
 

LivetoTrade

Well-Known Member
#35
It is long since I have seen this, or maybe I did not notice close enough -

IV of Puts lower than IV of Calls

 

DanPickUp

Well-Known Member
#36
Hi

I am clear, that I go quit fast through certain subjects. Why? I do not want to make the thread completely academically as this finally is of no need. We want to make some kind of money with option trading and we want to have a good chance to do so. That will do the job.

As we any way start to combine subjects with other subjects, I always will repeat on one or the other subject, like I did in the last two posts. In that way you still will get enough cross informations on the different subjects. This just to inform the once of you which may some times feel, that they not can follow the speed of the thread. Just stay with us and read and in later posts you suddenly will see the deeper connections from each of this subjects. :)

LTT now has asked for some more information about low vola and high vola option trading.

Can be a confusing subject, isnt it? Now let me give some more light on it. Let me start with the confusion we can face. Market is on top low, volatility is on yearly high. Hmm, what to do? Will the market further fall or will the market now move up and what could/can I do when I now want to implement for example a short strangle? What do I have to think of when only playing the pure vola games in the markets through strategically option trading?

Hope the following screen shots and the explanations should expand basic knowledge about strategically option trading. Green gives you an idea, how the analyze picture in any option software is generated. It includes the time frame and the strikes we choose for the strategy. Range choosed is bigger on the upside, as my personal meaning says that market could move up as soon vola declines and I am lazy to adjust in such a case. Such trades you can implement on bigger time frames and then leave them and concentrate on other stuff.The blue dotted line is when the trade was first time explained in this thread. We will watch that trade in the coming future.

http://i39.tinypic.com/24kzaev.png

Now to the long straddle. Here we go for a rise in vola and market direction.

http://i42.tinypic.com/dskdl.png

Let us repeat:

Playing a high vola strategy (Short Strangle) = Speculate that vola will decline and time will be in our favor. Through the vola decline, our option will loose quicker on value and through time our option will loose time value.[/I]

Playing a low vola strategy(Long Staddle) = Speculate that vola rises and playing direction of the market. Through the rise of vola, our option will increase in profit and through the market direction the option increases in its intrinsic value.

Now about the comment that puts in general have a higher IV: I know that this is the case in the S&P 500 in the States and also in wheat. Even then: If the vola in the S&P is low, the puts are also priced lower. On the other hand: You can implement a strategy in a way that you play a small directional game as I showed with the short strangle. Playing the direction with pure naked options on short time frames, as most of the Indian option traders do, is a higher risk game compare to what I showed until now. It can be done and I will spot some light on that in future posts.

DanPickUp
 

comm4300

Well-Known Member
#37
w/o disrupting the flow of this thread...lemme just say Thanks ! a million times.

seriously, there can be 100s of pdf available on options to download on the internet, but nothing compares to the way knowledge flows step by step here at traderji !

thank you Dan for being kind enough to share !

will re-read the entire thread again on weekend.
 

DanPickUp

Well-Known Member
#38
Hi

If any one of you have any specific questions to what is posted until now you are welcome to do so before I move on to the next subject.

If you do so, please stay in the range of the subjects which are spotted on in the past posts as you will have the chance to ask new questions after we moved on to some more subjects.

Thank you.

DanPickUp
 
#39
Hi

If any one of you have any specific questions to what is posted until now you are welcome to do so before I move on to the next subject.

If you do so, please stay in the range of the subjects which are spotted on in the past posts as you will have the chance to ask new questions after we moved on to some more subjects.

Thank you.

DanPickUp

What should be our time frame and SL for both of the above trades ?
 
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