We continue to get questions regarding why the $VIX futures are priced as they are, and how one should interpret that information. This is a subject that we have discussed many times in the past, but it is probably worthwhile to review it again.
There are two significant pieces of data that one should always be aware of, when evaluating $VIX futures: 1) the relationship of the futures to $VIX itself,
There will be a very slight alteration of our publishing schedule. The second issue in March will be published one day early, on Wednesday, March 26th. This is because of the AAPTA Conference in Austin, to which I will be traveling on Thursday, March 27th (the usual publishing day).
We are proud to announce the release of Option Workbench 3.0. This upgrade to Option Workbench puts even more power in your hands with these new features:
- FREE delayed market quotes for equities, ETFs and options with the ability to upgrade to real-time for a modest price
- Execute trades with select brokers or in your Option Workbench Virtual Account
- Manage your option strategies the way option traders think
- Monitor your positions' P&L, risk and expected value in real time.
Often at expiration, an option trader will have in-the-money options that need to be either exited or rolled. Market makers know this and purposely widen the spreads in the market so that the bid for the option is below parity. On expiration day, the option has a value of at least parity so the astute trader must always make sure he exits the position at parity or higher. For a put, parity is the strike price minus the underlying price.
In this MoneyShow.com interview, Lawrence G. McMillan talks about "how he measures the market's overbought and oversold status." Larry discusses breadth oscillators and modified Bollinger Bands, and details calculations and provides signal pramaters. Watch the video at Moneyshow by clicking the image below.
We all know that trading options is exciting, highly competitive, and can be very profitable. The key to long term and consistent profits in option trading is options education.
In this MoneyShow.com interview, Lawrence G. McMillan discusses "how he trades volatility in today's markets and what strategies he has found to be the best." Larry talks about volatility ETFs and ETNs, the relationship between the VIX index and VIX futures, hedging, directional trading, and VIX spike peak buy signals. Watch the video at Moneyshow by clicking the image below.
For information on Fat Tail Distributions and The Empirical PDF refer to Enhancing Option Portfolio Returns Using Probability and Statistics - Part 4.
In this MoneyShow.com interview, Lawrence G. McMillan "discusses why selling naked puts does not have to be as dangerous as many option traders may think." Larry explains why he prefers put-selling to covered writing, how he locates put-selling opportunities and what situations to avoid. Watch the video at Moneyshow by clicking the image below.
The CBOE has launched what may prove to be a very useful product – short-term $VIX futures ($VXST). The feature article discusses their terms and their potential usage. Also, there are comparative charts with $VIX and $VXST. If volume is decent, this should be an excellent product.
