Edwin

It's possible that there's a spike up for the expiration for 2/23 is because the Feb Fed meeting is captured in that expiration that is on 2/17. http://mam.econoday.com/byweek.asp?day=18&month=2&year=2016&cust=mam&lid=0

I'm not sure if you are new to SteadyOptions or not, but the SPX and VIX trades are volatile because the market is volatile right now, the VIX is above 20. There is much better liquidity in SPX, SPY, and VIX compared to equity options (except for perhaps FB, AAPL, NFLX, and a handful of other names), so you have to take that into consideration. In my opinion, there are more opportunities to get in and out of trades like the SPX butterfly and VIX calendars when the markets have big swings, as long as you have the time/duration for the trade to play out. But that doesn't guarantee that every trade is a winner. I don't think there have been many instances where the VIX calendar has been as big as a loser as the last one that was rolled.

Thanks for the suggestion, I don't use Prophet charts, I have never known what the difference between Prophet and normal TOS charts are in terms of features and functionality. I follow TastyTrade, but not Tim Knight. They only give him 15 minutes at 3:15pm EST. I normally pay more attention to Market Measures, and other back study segments, and some of their call in segments, as well as ShadowTrader. Anyways, for those that are interested in figuring out how the scan you are referring to works and how to set it up (I didn't know what it was or how to do it until I looked at these two links). I had no idea TOS or Prophet had such a feature. http://www.autochartist.com/think-or-swim-how-to-access-autochartist/ Can you go into more detail about the volatility skew strategy? Do you have some examples?

Peter can answer better than I, but most of the questions from the chat window in the Webinar was why he selected those strikes, and why he did a diagonal instead of a calendar. I didn't see answers to those questions.

I was annoyed by the arguing/questions in the chat window.

Thanks, I was obviously not paying attention.

I'm surprised they wouldn't consider posting the recordings on YouTube. If you can watch live for free, what's the difference? They would be able to reach more people that can't watch live.

I don't recall, NFLX was trading between 125-130 last week.

I don't remember the exact strikes, it was something like Long Jan 125.71 Puts, short December (1) Weekly 120 puts. I didn't see how much of a debit he paid.

I only caught a part of the webinar, they started late because of technical difficulties. I was only able to catch the first trade example. It was a NFLX put diagonal. It wasn't clear as to why the presenter picked the strategy and didn't clearly explain the background of the trade. There were a lot of questions on the chat about why he picked a diagonal instead of a calendar, and what underlyings he uses this type of trade on or what his methodology of analysis he used to come up with the trade idea. And the questions seemed to be left unanswered. I honestly was pretty unimpressed, the presenter was not a good speaker and did not do a good job communicating to the audience. It was basically a presentation on an example of a profitable trade where he held the diagonal until the short leg expired worthless. He didn't talk about what he would have done if NFLX had gone up and how he would have managed the trade if the underlying started go against him. I'm pretty sure it wasn't an earnings related trade, the example was a short a December weekly put, and long a January closer to the money put for a debit. If anyone else was on, maybe they can add to what I caught.

Thanks

Thanks, is there a link to register for the webinar? Will the recording be posted if I can't join live?

I wonder if anyone has published performance with those strategies, or perhaps do the opposite of those strategies and compare the performance. I assume most unusual activity consists of buying out of the money calls or puts. These are typically low probability strategies, so it's be good to compare the following: If the unusual trade was buying an out of the money call: Compare the performance of buying that call to selling that call and also to selling a similar delta put.

Which expiration was this for? I was thinking more for December Monthlies.

News: Multistate Outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O26 Infections Linked to Chipotle Mexican Grill Restaurantshttp://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2015/O26-11-15/index.html Any thoughts of selling CMG premium as it's down about 45+ points/8% as of now? IV Rank has gone up almost 40% to about 75%.

According to this the CBOE got rid of options on VXST as of June. http://www.cboe.com/micro/vxst/

I can't use TWS from work (I use webtrader), but I would think closing 2 legs at a time is best in terms of pricing fills, but won't be the best for commissions. It might also depend on how far away your strikes are from each other and if the spreads are trading near the same price. You never want to leg out, since you're leaving yourself at risk of a big move.

Kim, when you're opening orders for calendars (e.g. PCLN, CMG, GOOG, etc.) do you have GTC orders open for multiple strikes on both the call and put side to see what you can get filled? If not, are you looking at the mid price for all of the calendars (near at the money) to see which ones you might be able to get filled at the best price? That's what I typically do when putting orders in, but I'm viewing the mid-prices in TOS and putting in IB orders in webtrader. The mid prices can be misleading, and typically I'm not able to get filled at mid-price. I usually have to go quite a bit higher than mid especially in less liquid products like PCLN and CMG. There is no functionality to pause execution in either webtrader or MobileTWS, and I have no access to TWS from work.

XIV pricing will be dependent on the VIX term structure, not based on spot VIX. I don't believe there's going to be a way to accurately approximate where XIV would be trading if VIX was back to 30. 9/2 was the last time VIX was at 30, and XIV was trading between 23-24.

I think several people have mentioned that in other threads. https://steadyoptions.com/forum/topic/2870-spx-trade/?hl=optionshouse#entry49918 https://steadyoptions.com/forum/topic/2513-execution-and-market-system/?hl=optionshouse#entry46392

Good to know. Maybe try thinkorswim paper trading. I don't recall if you have to put in money into an account to paper trade with it. I think the quotes are delayed unless you have a real account.

SPX, VIX, SPY & AAPL trade the highest volume options products, they are liquid, getting filled shouldn't be hard. See the volume reports in the CBOE link below. http://www.cboe.com/data/monthlyvolume.aspx Equity Options Volume reports: http://www.cboe.com/data/avgdailyvolarchive.aspx

The 2000 Oct-23-15 Puts didn't trade near 54 today, they traded at around 77 that time, and the 1900 put traded around 32 at that time this morning. The 2000 puts that expire this week traded at 54.10 today at that time, so that's probably the quote that OpionsHouse had in their paper trading system. The 1900 puts that expire for Oct2 weeklies (second expiration week) traded around 21 at that time. It sounds like their "paper" trading system had incorrect quotes that mixed up all of your expiration dates on two of your legs, and that's why your paper trade looks like a credit. I would bring this up with their support staff and ask them. Maybe they'll investigate it for you.

Are you sure you entered in the trade properly for the right strikes and the right expiration? It was a debit trade to open, not a credit.

These can be tough trades on vol products, overnight markets can totally go against you either way. You might think you would have been safe buying XIV or SVXY yesterday with the strong close, and then you're down quite a bit this morning. And then the opposite can happen if you're long VXX and the pre-market is up 1-2%.