kdunaway

Big Thank you!

@Alvin Leong I started learning butterfly spreads with Gavin McMaster's "Bullshit Free Guide to Butterfly Spreads" (2.99 on Amazon, can pick up for free too). He runs optionstradingiq.com. It is definitely a beginning book, but he lays out a bunch of different variations. His main butterfly trade is a Bearish butterfly, which looks for overbought markets and profits from a slow uptrend and a then a pull back. Thetatrend.com has a lot of info too, it isn't updated anymore as owner got a job trading.

I would think so. I haven't verified this in Webtrader or TWS yet.

Currently have the new value bundle and the OPRA subscription. On the mobile app the indices (RUT, VIX, etc) show as realtime and all the stock quotes are delayed. The delayed quotes are yellow. So that leads me to believe that the indices quotes are still streaming. I was surprised at this myself.

I elected to go the route of snapshots when I need them because it ends up capped at a 1.50 per exchange (4.50 total). If I end up hitting the cap consistently I'll switch. Couldn't bring my self to pay for streaming when it was free before for right now. Index quotes are still streaming if I understood it correctly. I'm subscribed to the new bundle and OPRA Top of Book subscription. The OPRA fee is waived with 20 dollars activity. This seemed to work fine this past week when I switched I mostly trade on IB mobile during the day and have access to Fidelity quotes so streaming quotes aren't really really important to me.

I did not. I can come up with a rough estimate after work. I think I have the prices to make an estimate.

What I have priced out so far is the Feb 10th IBs. All this is just using mid points and not real fills. I could not get a fill at the mid-yesterday on a paper trade. The 20 point wide was up ~1.50 per spread. The 30 pt wide one was up 0.20 per spread. It was heavily dependent on when it was entered. The credits received were a about a 1-1.5 lower at the EOD versus 2PM. The Feb 3rd should be up around 5.00 per spread assuming a 30 pt wide. This is probably assuming a higher credit that could have actually been received at EOD yesterday. All these are in the 10-20% of total profit range depending on which exporations used and aggressiveness

Decided to try to paper trade/just track a hypothetical trade out of curiosity in light of the implied move information supplied. I did not get a paper trade to fill in the last minutes. I found it interesting that a 30 point wide Feb 10th ATM (840) iron fly the credit received dropped from ~26 dollars to 24.90 in the last two hours. The price of the wings jumped up and spreads widened. There wasn't much OI there. The trade I'll track is a Feb 10th 810/840/840/870 and the same trade with Feb 3rd expiration. If I get time I'll look at a calendar too for my own education. I think looking at performance when outside/near implied move will be interest to me at least. AMZN is down 4.43% (802) after hours.

Thanks for the comments. Looks like I was looking at the past history incorrectly with the information I had. I'll still either place the trade or paper trade it to see performance. @Yowster Where did you get the data for the graphs? I'm still in the learning stage and my tools are a little rudimentary. At the least writing this helped me to form the idea, and I will have to think more through hold-thru calendars. I've seen a couple of your posts explaining the thought process. I have the most experience (of my limited experience) with Iron flys in general so it is my go to comfort zone.

I have been thinking of ways to capitalize on straddle that consistently under perform with holding through earnings. @cuegis posted a similar idea for FB. I looked at multiple different setups for an ATM AMZN Iron Fly to holding through earnings. My goal was to have a setup which had break-even points around ATM+/-Straddle price when accounting for expected volatility drop. I used Fidelity's P/L Calculator to estimate this impact. Overall I am more drawn to the Feb 10th expiration over the Feb 3rd as it gives more room for error. The Feb 3rd Iron Fly has about 2.5x the max potential return for similar risk, but the B/E is at +/-80% of straddle price. Feb 3rd - Best setup I saw was 30 pt wide wings. B/E +/-80% of straddle price. ~375 risk for 26.25 credit, potential return 1750 post earnings. The OI was ok on the wings. Might have to adjust strikes slightly for OI. Feb 10th - 30 pt wide wings, B/E =/-straddle price. 460 risk for 25.42 credit. Potential return post earnings $750. OI was worse than Feb 3rd for wings. My plan is to try Feb 10th with 30 point wide wings placed near close. Attached are the generated graphs. I'll update with placed trade. AMZN Iron Fly 2_1 eval.docx

What I was told when applying for options approval at IB was that number of options trades had to be over 100. I was stuck in middle between 75 and 100 with the experience and range of trade I had selected. Hope this helps.