Hany

I've been reading all of the posts here (sometimes several times), and there seems to be a lot of confusion. I am definitely very confused. Let's start with the first trade. DW writes: "For the Long butterfly trade, Augen sets the following conditions. Entry Day: Thursday, when new weeklies enter the market. If a market moving event is expected on Friday (the next day), such as a jobs report, then wait until it's over before entering the trade. Entry Time: Thursday by 10:00" I presume this is a debit trade placed on weeklies that expire the following Friday (8 days). Let's use yesterday's SPY as an example (price was 141.02 at 10am). We could place one of the two following trades: Buy 1 contract of 140 put Sell 2 contracts of 141 put Buy 1 contract of 142 put or Buy 1 contract of 139 put Sell 2 contracts of 141 put Buy 1 contract of 143 put I'm not sure which of the above trades is better. The latter is a four-point spread mentioned by Kim (is this right Kim?). DW adds: "Trade criteria: ATM (or close to it) butterfly. Highly liquid stock, well, such as AAPL or GOOG. Exit: He suggests, exiting by Friday close, however, the position could be held until Tuesday (morning?). After which the rapid effects of time decay will begin to take hold of the trade." These two statements are the source of most of the confusion. We don't want the stock to move, so it doesn't make sense to use AAPL and GOOG. Why not a non-volatile stock like JNJ or MSFT or an index? Also, on which Friday should the trade be closed? In one day or 8 days? Since the trade benefits from time decay, then shouldn't the trade be held beyond Tuesday, when "the rapid effects of time decay ... begin to take hold of the trade"? Any help clearing things up would be greatly appreciated.

DW, You state that "For the Long butterfly trade, Augen sets the following conditions. Entry Day: Thursday, when new weeklies enter the market. If a market moving event is expected on Friday (the next day), such as a jobs report, then wait until it's over before entering the trade." Why wait till after the jobs report to enter the trade? Most of the time, a jobs report causes the market to move, which is what you want. So it would make more sense to place the trade before the news comes out.

Is the webinar archived online somewhere? If so, can you provide the link?

I never heard of an "order priority system". Does IB have this too?

I've been using the "New OptionsHouse" platform for several months! There are only two real benefits over the older OH platform: (1) real-time stock price updates in your watchlist, and (2) the order ticket shows the bid/ask spread. That's it. Fills are no better and no faster. I've decided I'm going to switch to IB at the end of this month. I'm going to keep my OH account active in case I need to access to the platform. Have you tried OptionsXpress? No base fee and $1.50 per contract. I'm not sure if their mobile app is any good.

Sometimes I have an easier time with legging out when I'm in an iron condor and one of the legs is really far OTM and not worth anything. I'm not sure about legging out of a strangle. If you try different brokers, please share your experience with us. I've tried TOS, ETrade, Fidelity, TradeMonster, and TradeKing. I'm don't like any of the platforms with these brokers, so I'm sticking with OptionsHouse until I find one I like. OptionsHouse is not bad when you open a position and keep till expiration (such as RUT iron condor); OH sucks for IV trades when profits depend on getting in and out with good fills. Is this your experience as well?

I use OptionsHouse too, and I just took a look. My values are different than yours for the 55 (call) and 50 (put) strangle. The current bid/ask is 2.57/2.64. Since you are buying the strangle, I wouldn't expect that you would be able to get filled close to the bid price. Based on this spread and my experience, I would expect a fill around 2.62 or 2.63 (just below the ask).

Michael, What are the details of the trade? I presume it is a credit spread. What are the strike prices and what is the underlying security?

eOptions doesn't permit multi-leg spreads, so you have to place each leg one at a time, and you need to pay $3 each time.

Hi everyone, I am among those of you using OptionsHouse (OH) and having a problem with very bad fills (or no fills at all!). I did some searching this weekend and I found a table by Barrons that makes comparisons of online brokers: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704759704577265722419871332.html One of the column headings of the table is "Smart Order Routing". I was very surprised to see that OH has a similar smart routing system as Interactive Brokers. I find this hard to believe. I've tried OptionsMonster and OptionsExpress, but their platforms are simply not as good as OH. Has anyone using OH switched to another broker? If so, can you share your experience with us? thanks, Hany