Our members know that pre earnings straddles and calendars have been our bread and butter strategies in the recent years. We enter those trades when the prices are cheap compared to previous cycles. However, in the last few months of 2018, Implied Volatility exploded, making most of those trades too expensive.
Shorting volatility in 2017 was easy money. In fact, it was easy money every year since 2010 when iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures TM ETN (NYSEARCA:VXX) has been created. Just go short VXX, buy puts or put debit spreads, and you would make money every year since 2010.
This week Steady Options implemented the newest iteration of the Anchor trades – the Leveraged Anchor.This will now officially be tracked.We will also continue to track the Traditional Anchor as well. It is our belief that the Leveraged Anchor will perform better, on a risk adjusted basis than Anchor has, particularly on the upside of the trade.
Making money in the stock market in 2017 was easy. Pick almost any stock or index. Buy calls. Sell put credit spreads. Almost any bullish or slightly bullish strategy would work. Everyone was a genius trader. Then came 2018. US stocks posted its worst year in a decade. Volatility exploded.
Much of the discussion in finance is about "active" vs. "passive". Active management typically uses security selection and/or market timing to make portfolio management decisions. Passive management typically does not, instead, focusing on market risk premiums as the source of expected return. So which is better?
The covered call. That popular, strategy described by many as risk-free or at least so low-risk that you can’t go wrong. Or can you? A few dangers of the covered call should be described or, more accurately, a realistic point of view about this “sure thing” trade. A few points worth remembering:
Today might just have the smallest gap between Wall Street and Main Street we’ve ever experience.We’ve come a long way when it comes to common retail traders access, affordability of trade commissions, options trading education, research and analysis services, and, finally, some progress in accessibility of technology for options traders.
Over the last decade there has been a substantial rise in proclamations such as “investment advisors are useless,” “manage your own assets,” “don’t pay for financial advice,” and other similar sentiments.
Options traders spend a lot of time trying to figure out the perfect moment to open a trade; but little attention is devoted to the other side of the transaction. When should you close? This applies equally to long and short positions. However, one aspect of short timing concerns expiration Friday.
Trading in high-vol environments requires a different approach from low-vol markets. Here are 8 strategies to improve your trading and help you to survive in high volatility markets. They are very different from strategies in low volatility environment.
Selling Options Premium refers to certain set of strategies that involve net selling of options, as opposed to buying premium where you are net buyer of options. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about Selling Options Premium. This article will explain the basic concepts and debunk some of the myths.
In February of 2017, I wrote an article about combining together the concepts of momentum and put selling. You can find that article here as prerequisite reading. With this post, we'll look at how the strategy presented has done since then, along with some additional implementation ideas.
