SteadyOptions Trading Blog

Harry Browne popularized the concept of the "Permanent Portfolio" decades ago by recommending an asset allocation of 25% stocks, 25% bonds, 25% gold, and 25% cash. In the 90's, the concept of "risk parity" also became popular with writings by Cliff Asness of AQR Capital.

What is the overall impact of High Frequency Trading (HFT)? Some traders believe that the use of algorithms in super-fast and powerful computers allows large hedge funds and other institutions to beat the market, implying that because these big traders can out-perform individuals, profits are unfairly gained. But is it true?

Lorintine Capital and Steady Options have been trading the Anchor strategy for a number of years. During this time Anchor has evolved as we have learned more, in no short part due to the Steady Option’s members continuing questioning of the strategy, insights they provide, and a large group of individuals seeking to improve the strategy’s efficiency. 

You may be asking yourself why am I reading this basic article about options trading? Well, if you’re anything like me, I didn’t learn options trading via the fundamentals.  Rather, I found a few strategies that made sense to me and started trading, without much regard to the underlying workings and details.

Options traders focus, often too much, on implied volatility to estimate the next change in option valuation. Is this always a wise policy? Options are derived from volatility in the underlying security (thus the term derivatives), a good question is: Why not focus on volatility trends in the underlying (historical volatility) to judge likely future valuation trends in options?

In our Bitcoin: The Greater Fool Theory article, we discussed how the most popular cryptocurrency in the world can be compared to a worrying trend. The ‘greater fool theory’ states that the price of an asset is determined not by its intrinsic value but by the sentiments and expectations of market participants.

Many investors have become interested in trend following strategies in recent years due to the scars of living through two major bear markets since 2000. In my firm, we also believe in trend following as a sustainable method for managing the downside risk of investing in risky assets like equity index funds and ETF's. 

Diversification can be an issue for traders with smaller account sizes. It can be incredible difficult to trade covered calls and create a diversified portfolio. For example, an investor with a $25,000 account would use up over half his capital doing one covered call on AAPL stock.

Many options traders seem to have a problem defining themselves. Repeatedly, we see traders describe themselves as conservative, using options primarily to hedge market risk. But … are they staying true to this definition.

Nothing can impact an investor’s success more than discipline. Warren Buffett noted that “the stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” In studying the returns of various asset classes, JP Morgan made the startling conclusion that the average investor is the worst performing class:

I’m a big fan of the work of Cliff Asness and AQR (Applied Quantitative Research).  Cliff was interviewed by Barry Ritholtz on his podcast. About twelve minutes in Barry asked Cliff what it means to be a quantitative investor. 

Most traders are familiar with calendar spreads as a directionless trade that benefits from accelerated time decay for the near-term expiry position vs. the longer-dated option and benefits from volatility expansion. A "long calendar" spread is created when we sell the front month and buy the back month, getting a debit.