This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 17, No. 17 on September 12, 2008.
We often get questions regarding the operation of volatility trading strategies. While we endeavor to explain why we are establishing certain trades, or why we are taking follow-up action, we really haven’t put it together in a sort of “how to” article. That’s the purpose of this week’s feature.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 16, No. 13 on July 13, 2007.
In this newsletter, over the years we have presented many methods for protecting a portfolio of stocks. Some are “ancient,” such as buying S&P 500 Index ($SPX) puts and some are “new,” such as buying $VIX calls. With the continuation of the bull market well into its fourth year (making it the fifth longest bull market in history – but not the fifth largest), many portfolio managers and individual investors are becoming concerned that a sharp correction may be more than just a remote possibility. As such, the topic of protecting a portfolio with derivatives has once again risen to the forefront. With that in mind, I wrote The Striking Price column in Barron’s this week, on this topic.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 17, No. 20 on October 24, 2008.
In recent weeks, one of the more profitable strategies has been the $VIX/$SPX hedged trade. We have recommended it several times in this publication, as well as in other newsletters that we write. Many of our readers have asked for more information on the strategy, as it is either new to them, or they haven’t tried to use if before. So this article will describe the strategy in detail – discussing its basic concepts, determining how many options to trade on each side of the hedge, and finally how to handle follow-up strategies.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 19, No. 17 on September 17, 2010.
One of the main problems with commodity-based ETF’s is that they don’t necessarily track the underlying commodity very well. This is mainly due to the fact that the ETF is forced to trade the futures contracts, and there are times when it isn’t feasible for the ETF managers to roll from one futures contract to the next without making a “losing” trade that puts “drag” on the performance of the ETF vis-a-vis the spot index or commodity itself.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 5, No. 9 on May 9, 1996.
The concept of volatility, and especially implied volatility is extremely important for option traders. We often refer to implied volatility, for it is the foundation of many of our strategies. However, when meeting the public, I find that many people don't have a clear concept of what implied volatility is, so this article will be educational for some readers, and merely review for others.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 3, No. 10 on May 27, 1994.
We have, in the past, often written about the fact that options can be used to help spot "hot" stocks, such as potential takeover candidates. Option premiums tend to inflate and/or option volume tends to increase prior to a major fundamental news event concerning the stock. The reason for this, of course, is that "insiders" — those who have prior knowledge of the news, or at least have a very educated guess — buy options because of the tremendous leverage available from the profitable purchase of an option.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 19, No. 2 on January 28, 2010.
Over the years, we have written many times about the problems in predicting or estimating volatility. However, it is necessary to attempt the task, because it is so crucial in determining which (option) strategies can be used.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 16, No. 14 on July 27, 2007.
What Is A “90% Day?”
A “90% Day” must satisfy two criteria: 1) either advances or declines comprise more than 90% of all issues that moved that day (unchanged issues don’t count), and 2) either advancing or declining volume was 90% or more of the sum of advancing and declining volume.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 9, No. 2 on January 27, 2000.
The question posed in the title above is one that should probably be asked more often than it is. Somehow, it has become something of a consensus in the option trading community that implied and historical (actual) volatility will converge. That’s not really true – at least not in the short term. Moreover, even if they do converge, which one was right to begin with – implied or historical? That is, did implied volatility move to get more in line with actual movements of the underlying, or did the stock’s movement speed up or slow down to get in line with implied volatility? In this article, we’ll look at some examples of what really happens with respect to implied and historical volatility, and we’ll try to draw some conclusions regarding this comparison.
This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 3, No. 22 on November 17, 1994.
Volatility
Volatility is merely the term that we use to describe how fast a stock, future, or index changes in price. When we speak of volatility in connection with options, there are two types of volatility that are important: historical volatility, which is a number that can be calculated mathematically by seeing how fast the stock has been changing in price over the past 10 days, 20 days, or any other time period that we want to examine. The other type of volatility that is important for option traders is implied volatility. Implied volatility is what the options are "saying" about future volatility: if it is high, then the options are predicting that the underlying instrument is going to become more volatile in the (near) future; if it is low, then the options are predicting that the volatility of the underlying will decrease. Thus there may be a difference between the historical and implied volatility. If the difference is large enough, then one can use options strategies to create a position with an "edge" — the "edge" being the differential between these two types of volatility.
