Tools must have

[yalgaar 40]

I am a new member to this amazing community and enjoying learning. I realized Straddles and Calendar Strategies are the bread and butter for SteadyOptions trades. I am overwhelmed with all the information and learning on this and have decided to narrow down my focus and have decided just to master these 2 strategies and spend time as much as I can.

That said what are the must have tools to understand why certain trades are taken? I would like to understand how we look for a potential trade and how we decide to go for a specific trade? Do I need to buy any paid subscription or do I need to install any software free or paid to be able to achieve my goal?

Basically what are the must have tools to master the in and outs of the 2 Strategies?

[Yowster 9,174]

32 minutes ago, yalgaar said:

I am a new member to this amazing community and enjoying learning. I realized Straddles and Calendar Strategies are the bread and butter for SteadyOptions trades. I am overwhelmed with all the information and learning on this and have decided to narrow down my focus and have decided just to master these 2 strategies and spend time as much as I can.

That said what are the must have tools to understand why certain trades are taken? I would like to understand how we look for a potential trade and how we decide to go for a specific trade? Do I need to buy any paid subscription or do I need to install any software free or paid to be able to achieve my goal?

Basically what are the must have tools to master the in and outs of the 2 Strategies?

First off, in this current market environment of elevated volatility that has been going on for an extended period of time, most of our tradional calendar and straddle analysis would exclude pretty much every trade setup right now, so we have to be more creative in our analysis and assume volatility is going to remain somewhat elevated.    That said, the market will at some point return to more normal volatility levels and that is where our tradional analysis comes in.    A RV analysis tool is very helpful, especially when researching your own trades, to determine how current RV levels compare to prior cycles and to see typical RV changes over periods of time.  I'll stop short of saying it's "must have" as you can reference every one of SO's prior trades and compute RV levels at entry time - but having an RV tool makes doing this quicker and easier, and will also allow you to research stocks we may not have used in prior official trades.

[yalgaar 40]

23 minutes ago, Yowster said:

A RV analysis tool is very helpful, especially when researching your own trades, to determine how current RV levels compare to prior cycles and to see typical RV changes over periods of time. 

Where can I find this? Is there a particular one you recommend?

[Yowster 9,174]

1 hour ago, yalgaar said:

Where can I find this? Is there a particular one you recommend?

volatilityhq.com Official Thread
Chartaffair.com - RV Charts & Backtesting for Steady Options

[Kim 7,943]

All the tools are listed under Promotions and Tools forum.

In my opinion, the most essential tool for any options trader is ONE software. It really shows you the P/L charts and lets you do some backtesting. 

[yalgaar 40]

Can someone recommend a stock screener tool? There is so much out there when I google I still can't get some of the very basic features that I need.

At the minimum I would like the screener to show me the following:

1) Top Gainers / Top Losers

2) Top Gainers / Top Losers (from various Indices)

3) Filter based on Liquidity

4) Filter based on Market Cap.

[yalgaar 40]

On 4/14/2020 at 5:58 PM, Kim said:

All the tools are listed under Promotions and Tools forum.

In my opinion, the most essential tool for any options trader is ONE software. It really shows you the P/L charts and lets you do some backtesting. 

OK. Thanks. I just bought the subscription. Which version do you use currently? The stable 1.28.27 OR the Beta 2.0.54?

[Kim 7,943]

I'm using 2.0.54.

 

Hope you used our link to get the discount.

[yalgaar 40]

43 minutes ago, Kim said:

I'm using 2.0.54.

 

Hope you used our link to get the discount.

I thought I did, but on further investigation it seems like I didn't do it correctly. I will check with their customer support to make the adjustments.

[yalgaar 40]

I have been playing with it all afternoon. I just love it even though I am just getting started. Do you recommend any videos that goes over all the features of the software? 

Also I noticed it won't let me go before around Oct 2019. Is it due to Trial version?

[Kim 7,943]

OptionNET Explorer Software Webinar

Not sure about Oct.2019, you will have to ask them.

[yalgaar 40]

Just checked again. It does limit you to 6 months back testing. I get the following popup when I attempt to go beyond 6 months.

Also after looking further into the pricing structure I found the following:

               They charged me 10 GBP for 1 month trial and then they will charge me 150 GBP for 3 months.

               With SteadyOptions Link, they would charge 25 GBP for 1 month trial and then 135 GBP for 3 months.

 

[yalgaar 40]

Hello Kim- 

   Do you use any other tools besides the ONE software to be able to decide on the trades? I know you mentioned OptionSlam in 1 of your post, I wonder what else is needed to understand the Steady Options Trades. Want to get an idea of monthly cost for this. I am treating this as a business and investing on financial education but nice to know the running monthly expense for the same.

 

 

[Kim 7,943]

@Yowster mentioned the tools few posts ago.

[yalgaar 40]

16 hours ago, Kim said:

@Yowster mentioned the tools few posts ago.

OK. I wanted to confirm since I was not sure if the tools mentioned before were must and if the multiple tools mentioned were options or all must. So far I have gathered the following tools needed to be able to analyse the Trades taken by "SteadOptions" strategies. Want to ensure I got this right. I want to understand what is my business expense per month for tools and subscriptions.

 

1) Steady Options Subscription.

2) ONE Software.

3) chartaffair.com

4) volatalityhq

5) Optionslam.com

 

Did I get this right? Any more tools needed? Are all the above needed?

[Yowster 9,174]

@yalgaar Take a look at what the tools provide and then make your decision....

• ONE offers P&L analysis of option positions, and allows you to enter orders directly from there into certain brokers.  Many SO members use it.   However, there are certainly other P&L charting tools out there... some may be less robust and don't have the ability to execute trades directly from within them, but they may work fine for you depending on your needs and some of them may even be free (or have both free and premium/pay levels of service).
• VolatilityHQ and ChartAffair provide RV analysis, specific to SO-style trades.   They also offer some backtest and scanners as well as data on pre and post earnings stock price moves.   I believe both offer a trial period, so people could try out both and see what they prefer.
• Optionslam shows earnings info and pre and post earnings stock price moves and straddle moves, as well as some backtests and scanners.   It used to have a free level that went back a few cycles and a premium level to went back many years, not sure what is available on the free tier now.   The RV charting tools provide quite a bit of the same data that OptionSlam does, so if you have a RV charting tool you'd have to look at OptionSlam to see if the stuff that isn't in the RV tools is useful to you too to warrant paying for it.

It's easy to go overboard with tools and wind up buying more than what you use.   As you get experience with all of them, you can decide which ones you really need that are integral to your trades.   People will have different needs and requirements, so the tools that are integral to one person may not be as important to another.   I think a lot of it depends on somebody's knowledge and experience with options trading (greeks, volatility, complex multi-leg trades, etc).   The more experience and knowledge you get, the less reliant of a multitude of tools you will likely become.

[zxcv64 771]

Whilst we are on the subject of tools, does anyone know of, or have experience of, a tool other than ONE, which does a similar job (P&L forecasting and the ability to backtest)

I've used ONE for a year, and would like to see the alternatives on offer, and it's good, but has it's limitations.

I do not place any trades directly from ONE, and use IB's TWS for that, so I'm not bothered if the alternatives do not allow direct trade placement.

 

Edit: in case it matters, I'm UK based so not able to use ToS

 

Edited April 19, 2020 by zxcv64

[tavr 2]

On 4/19/2020 at 10:41 PM, zxcv64 said:

I've used ONE for a year, and would like to see the alternatives on offer, and it's good, but has it's limitations

What kind of limitations ONE has?

[Ches1989 0]

On 4/20/2020 at 4:41 AM, zxcv64 said:

Whilst we are on the subject of tools, does anyone know of, or have experience of, a tool other than ONE, which does a similar job (P&L forecasting and the ability to backtest)

I've used ONE for a year, and would like to see the alternatives on offer, and it's good, but has it's limitations.

I do not place any trades directly from ONE, and use IB's TWS for that, so I'm not bothered if the alternatives do not allow direct trade placement.

 

Edit: in case it matters, I'm UK based so not able to use ToS

 

Have you checked out AstroTrading? I heard positive feedbacks about it but I was not able to test it yet. I've also tried ONE couple of years ago and I agree with the price involved and limitations, I think it's not worth it.

[Duesseldorf 1]

Ok, If I understood it correctly One for PnL and VolatilityHQ for RV... what about iVolatility? What is the value added? And where do I get e.g. IV for futures? Thank you

[Kim 7,943]

20 minutes ago, options4winners said:

Ok, If I understood it correctly One for PnL and VolatilityHQ for RV... what about iVolatility? What is the value added? And where do I get e.g. IV for futures? Thank you

iVolatility is just another general set of tools that is provided free of charge to our members (typical cost $500-600 per year). Another benefit of the subscription. It's not specific to our strategies. I don't think they have futures.

[dr_john 0]

In terms of usability and backtesting abilities of VolatilityHQ and ChartAffair, are they similar?

[J_D 26]

On 4/19/2020 at 4:41 PM, zxcv64 said:

Whilst we are on the subject of tools, does anyone know of, or have experience of, a tool other than ONE, which does a similar job (P&L forecasting and the ability to backtest)

I've used ONE for a year, and would like to see the alternatives on offer, and it's good, but has it's limitations.

I do not place any trades directly from ONE, and use IB's TWS for that, so I'm not bothered if the alternatives do not allow direct trade placement.

 

Edit: in case it matters, I'm UK based so not able to use ToS

 

@zxcv64 You posted this back in April 2020 but wondering if you got a response on alternatives to ONE, specifically for P&L forecasting. Like you said, im not too keen on ability to send trades directly from it but mainly looking to an alternative to Etrade -> Option analyzer that I've been using for P&L

[zxcv64 771]

@J_D Hi, sadly not many alternatives to ONE. The other software is Optionvue (https://optionvue.com/) but I have never used it so don't know how good it is. 

 

I've gotten used to ONE now and mentally make as adjustment to the P/L chart which it shows me. For example, if I have a double calendar on the SPX say and the software is showing a profit of say 12% by the next day, I know in reality it will be more like 6-8%. Ideally, what would be great is if there was a software tool which would allow the volatilities of individual legs to be changed manually whilst we 'future-pace' a trade. I've even thought of hiring someone from Upwork to write me some nifty code to make this happen, but it's not high priority. For a static situation, it's not that difficult - even a VBA macro in Excel using the Black-Scholes model will be able to do this (but it won't be real-time).

 

Good luck. 

 

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by zxcv64

[Jasper 64]

Hoadley.net has a very moderately priced options strategy evaluation tool that is written using VBA in excel. I believe it accepts data feeds from external sources including IB, Yahoo amongst many others. It has a tab that caters specifically for time spreads that allows IV of options to be adjusted individually or in bulk. It comes with a 'Finance Add-in' tool that includes many advanced financial functions. One of them prices options based on many different inputs that the user can input. It can be used to develop custom spreadsheets that use options pricing. There's plenty of detail on the website. I use it sporadically for a wide range of purposes, including as a learning tool.

[V_NAM 24]

Is there any video showing how to use VolitilityHQ software. I subscribed but disappointed to find there is not much help available on how to use it. Official thread has such discussion that is not directly relevant and it takes hours to scan through to find what you need.

I would be keen on a video that shows how we use it for analyzing option strategies used at SO.

 

 

Edited March 15, 2021 by VNambula

[Ringandpinion 1,657]

15 hours ago, VNambula said:

Is there any video showing how to use VolitilityHQ software. I subscribed but disappointed to find there is not much help available on how to use it. Official thread has such discussion that is not directly relevant and it takes hours to scan through to find what you need.

I would be keen on a video that shows how we use it for analyzing option strategies used at SO.

I had wanted more "help" files when I started with it too but they don't exist.  However, in the SO topics, the amount of discussion on what is looked at and how it is used, is vast.  I just started reading posts that were presented with trades and screenshots of Vhq.  Once I got over the fact that there wasn't a "how to", it worked out.  Tip: start with newest posts and go backwards, things have changed since the inception of Vhq and the usage of the data is not all the same as when it started.

[landgraf 0]

I think narrowing down your focus is not a good idea in the first place. If you are trading and want to get some profit from this you have to master more than 2 strategies for being able to adapt to as many trading environments as possible. 

On 4/14/2020 at 10:31 PM, yalgaar said:

I am a new member to this amazing community and enjoying learning. I realized Straddles and Calendar Strategies are the bread and butter for SteadyOptions trades. I am overwhelmed with all the information and learning on this and have decided to narrow down my focus and have decided just to master these 2 strategies and spend time as much as I can.

That said what are the must have tools to understand why certain trades are taken? I would like to understand how we look for a potential trade and how we decide to go for a specific trade? Do I need to buy any paid subscription or do I need to install any software free or paid to be able to achieve my goal?

Basically what are the must have tools to master the in and outs of the 2 Strategies?

 

[olufemig 0]

On 4/14/2020 at 10:58 PM, Kim said:

All the tools are listed under Promotions and Tools forum.

In my opinion, the most essential tool for any options trader is ONE software. It really shows you the P/L charts and lets you do some backtesting. 

i use iBKR as a broker in the UK and i have just got ONE. Do you guys normally place trades with your supported broker through ONE?

[tbtf 45]

@olufemig Hi, I have the same configuration. I model my trades in ONE but then manually enter the orders into IB as you have more control that way. If you transmit from ONE it commits the trade to its database at what are likely to be incorrect prices which you will have to update once/if the trade fills. One thing I do find useful though is to create a flex query in IB to export the trades to a CSV file after they have filled. You can then import this into ONE safe in the knowledge that ONE now has a 100% accurate record of the trade and you can monitor it accordingly. You need to wait about an hour after the trade fills for the data to be available for the flex query but things don't tend to move so fast that that becomes an issue.

[techwormi 0]

Can you share the best tool for intra day analysis

[Ringandpinion 1,657]

On 8/20/2021 at 4:52 AM, techwormi said:

Can you share the best tool for intra day analysis

I use the gf58ometer available here:https://steadyoptions.com/forums/forum/topic/6710-gf58s-intraday-rv-monitor-for-interactive-brokers/.  Recent mods to it have made it a lot better.  You do need an active IB account though and you need to use the "Stable" version of IB TWS, the API on this version works best.

Chartaffair has one too but I haven't used it.  I think you can use this one without an IB account.

[FunkyFunk 5]

Hello everyone, I am new here and starting to get used to the strategies and software. All the existing explanations are very helpful, thanks for that. 

However :-) I can't decide between volatilityhq and chartaffair....any quick suggestions or does it even matter? I guess the RV plotting is prettymuch the same. volatilityhq in addition has the scanner...is it worth to pay the little extra fee on the monthly subscription ?

 

thanks :-) 

[TrustyJules 3,212]

2 hours ago, FunkyFunk said:

Hello everyone, I am new here and starting to get used to the strategies and software. All the existing explanations are very helpful, thanks for that. 

However 🙂 I can't decide between volatilityhq and chartaffair....any quick suggestions or does it even matter? I guess the RV plotting is prettymuch the same. volatilityhq in addition has the scanner...is it worth to pay the little extra fee on the monthly subscription ?

 

thanks 🙂

Chartaffair hails from your country and has a free trial I believe. Ask @Christof+ for that. Volatility HQ has been around a little longer and has some features that Chartaffair might not have but for a starting SOer both are equally valid. I stuck with VolatilityHQ because I started with it, @Djtux is very responsive and VoltalityHQ does what I need and more. So I have no reason to change and honestly I think there are people that would say the same about Chartaffair.

[FunkyFunk 5]

3 hours ago, TrustyJules said:

Chartaffair hails from your country and has a free trial I believe. Ask @Christof+ for that. Volatility HQ has been around a little longer and has some features that Chartaffair might not have but for a starting SOer both are equally valid. I stuck with VolatilityHQ because I started with it, @Djtux is very responsive and VoltalityHQ does what I need and more. So I have no reason to change and honestly I think there are people that would say the same about Chartaffair.

Thanks :-) I'll ask @Christof+

[ReadingGlass7 0]

Completly agreed. 

Thank you anyway