Option Stack

[cuegis 683]

I received an email from Option Stack and went to their site to give a quick look.

It does backtesting of options (only, I think) strategies.

It seems to be more sophisticated than any other emails I typically receive.

I wanted to know if anyone here has ever seen, or used, it?

[jason 0]

 

I think OptionStack is a wonderful piece of software.   I often use it to backtest trading strategies that I’ve seen from various trading magazines / podcasts / trading seminars.   For example, I used OptionStack to backtest many of the strategies discussed on tastytrade, and was quite surprised at some of the results of the backtests.  It is a fast and easy way to accurately gauge the effectiveness of a trading strategy without risking any real money. 

 

[Darcy MacDonald 24]

I've used it a bit.  It's pretty good if you can get over the learning curve.  I particularly like the way it can select strikes based on max risk-reward instead of just a static delta.

[Andrew 19]

Is anyone here a current user of optionstack?  I've been considering putting in some time to learn the software and getting a premium account.  I'm curious how much people actually use it.  Also I saw that the free account only gets you 2016.  Do the premium accounts get your current data?  For instance, is it 2014 to 2018 for the basic account and 2010 to 2018 for the advanced account?

[cuegis 683]

  On 9/18/2018 at 2:39 AM, Andrew said:

Is anyone here a current user of optionstack?  I've been considering putting in some time to learn the software and getting a premium account.  I'm curious how much people actually use it.  Also I saw that the free account only gets you 2016.  Do the premium accounts get your current data?  For instance, is it 2014 to 2018 for the basic account and 2010 to 2018 for the advanced account?

This looks interesting. I have to check it out further but, you should also look into ivolatility.com.

They have been around forever, and have one of the most extensive data bases of all options ( stocks, futures etc).

The have so many different tools (screeners, scanners) to evaluate anything you can possibly think of with data that goes back endlessly.

A few months ago Kim had mentioned that he was looking into getting an SO discount for us here.

But the prices for these tools are very close to optionstack ($39-$79)...so it is not crazy expensive for what you are getting.

[Andrew 19]

  On 9/18/2018 at 2:37 PM, cuegis said:

This looks interesting. I have to check it out further but, you should also look into ivolatility.com.

They have been around forever, and have one of the most extensive data bases of all options ( stocks, futures etc).

The have so many different tools (screeners, scanners) to evaluate anything you can possibly think of with data that goes back endlessly.

A few months ago Kim had mentioned that he was looking into getting an SO discount for us here.

But the prices for these tools are very close to optionstack ($39-$79)...so it is not crazy expensive for what you are getting.

Does ivolatility have backtesting like optionstack though?  At optionstack it seems like you can put together almost any trade you can think of.  Screenshot example below for an iron condor. The rules available for assembling trades seem very comprehensive.  

 

[cuegis 683]

  On 9/18/2018 at 2:41 PM, Andrew said:

Does ivolatility have backtesting like optionstack though?  At optionstack it seems like you can put together almost any trade you can think of.  Screenshot example below for an iron condor. The rules available for assembling trades seem very comprehensive.  

 

I saw that on their site and it looked pretty impressive.

But, I'm just wondering if it is just showing what the p/l, and risk parameters of a given trade look like, which we already pretty much know.

Or, is it taking the specific spread that you want to see, and then bring up the spread in the light of it's history, for that specific stock, and how that specific spread performed in the past , using past data.

Sort of like a variation of the vol hq RV charts, which show how a calendar, or straddle, for a specific stock has performed over the past 8 cycles.

If it can do this sort of thing, that would be a great tool.

It looked a bit complicated, and I wanted to explore it more but you had to subscribe before you can even run a few tests just to see how it all works.

ivolatilty looks different than this , but it does have a massive data base of the history of every single option, going back like 10+ years.

With their spread scanners you can setup the parameters of the kind of spreads you would be interested in ( ex. front month IV higher than back month IV, in a calendar, and by what %).

That is just one example.

But they both seem like tools that a bit complicated and will take some time to master.

With ivolatilty, for every one one their products, they allow you a free download of the users manual for each product so you can really see exactly what it can do before signing up.

[Mark17 0]

I've been looking into Option Stack.  I get the impression they're sometimes slow to respond--if they respond at all.  Is that true?

When they respond, they've been great.  The forum has lots of questions where they meticulously offered downloadable solutions.  Earlier on, they were quick to add things people would suggest.  Are they still like this?