Author: shyam

Weekly Recap: Options

Equities

world equity markets 2014-04-11.2014-04-18

It was a short week that saw a very volatile Nifty end flat (-0.14% in USD terms.) Here’s how the rest of the world markets fared:

Major
DAX(DEU) +0.99%
CAC(FRA) +1.50%
UKX(GBR) +0.97%
NKY(JPN) +3.28%
SPX(USA) +2.38%
MINTs
JCI(IDN) +1.67%
INMEX(MEX) +2.20%
NGSEINDX(NGA) +0.62%
XU030(TUR) +1.33%
BRICS
IBOV(BRA) -0.88%
SHCOMP(CHN) -1.49%
NIFTY(IND) +0.05%
INDEXCF(RUS) -2.40%
TOP40(ZAF) +0.76%

Commodities

Energy
Brent Crude Oil +1.87%
Ethanol -7.56%
Heating Oil +2.35%
Natural Gas +2.16%
RBOB Gasoline +1.11%
WTI Crude Oil +0.65%
Metals
Copper +0.33%
Gold 100oz -1.88%
Palladium -1.08%
Platinum -2.98%
Silver 5000oz -2.00%

Currencies

USDEUR:+0.42% USDJPY:+0.69%

MINTs
USDIDR(IDN) +0.09%
USDMXN(MEX) +0.08%
USDNGN(NGA) +0.91%
USDTRY(TUR) +0.38%
BRICS
USDBRL(BRA) +1.56%
USDCNY(CHN) +0.13%
USDINR(IND) +0.19%
USDRUB(RUS) +0.05%
USDZAR(ZAF) -0.02%
Agricultural
Cattle -0.55%
Cocoa -0.27%
Coffee (Arabica) +0.25%
Coffee (Robusta) -0.94%
Corn -0.85%
Cotton +1.35%
Feeder Cattle -0.74%
Lean Hogs -1.46%
Lumber -0.82%
Orange Juice +0.27%
Soybean Meal +3.49%
Soybeans +3.64%
Sugar #11 -0.83%
Wheat +4.66%
White Sugar +6.50%

Nifty Heatmap

CNX NIFTY heatmap 2014-04-11.2014-04-17

Index returns

index performance 2014-04-11.2014-04-17

Top winners and losers

RECLTD +3.50%
CROMPGREAV +7.67%
MCDOWELL-N +11.58%
DLF -9.44%
BANKINDIA -6.21%
YESBANK -5.89%
Banks saw some profit taking, USL was lifted by Diageo’s open offer.

ETFs

INFRABEES +16.16%
GOLDBEES +1.26%
NIFTYBEES +0.05%
BANKBEES -0.26%
JUNIORBEES -2.43%
PSUBNKBEES -4.54%
Infrastructure was back with a bang.

Investment Theme Performance

High beta tumbled and is Consistent10 has turned in 2x NIFTY returns since its inception!

consistent10 theme performance

Sector performance

sector performance 2014-04-11.2014-04-17

Yield Curve

yield Curve 2014-04-11.2014-04-17

Weekend Reading

We have started a series of posts that introduces options. We discuss the intuition behind the math and quant models, greeks and strategies with a ton of charts and original content. If you have read about options before or have a vague idea of what they are, then this is a good take-off point.

Options Trading Guide

The most important assumption

Prices and Returns

Prices don’t follow a statistical distribution (they are not ‘stationary’.) There is no obvious mean price and it doesn’t make sense to talk about the standard deviation of the price. Working with such non-stationary timeseries is a hassle.

NIFTY 2005-2014

But returns, on the other hand, are distributed somewhat like a normal (Gaussian) distribution.

nifty-histogram

And there doesn’t seem to be any auto-correlation between consecutive returns.

nifty-autocorrelation

If returns are normally distributed, then how are prices distributed? It turns out that the logarithm of the price is normally distributed. Why? Because

returns(t) = log(price(t)/price(t-1))

Now statisticians can magically transform a random time-series (prices) into something that is normally distributed (returns) and work with that instead. Almost all asset pricing models that you will come across in literature has this basic assumption at heart.

Fat tails

The assumption that returns are normally distributed allow mathematically precise models to be constructed. However, they are not very accurate.

In the normal distribution, events that deviate from the mean by five or more standard deviations (“5-sigma events”) have lower probability, thus meaning that in the normal distribution rare events can happen but are likely to be more mild in comparison to fat-tailed distributions. On the other hand, fat-tailed distributions have “undefined sigma” (more technically, the variance is not bounded).

For example, the Black–Scholes model of option pricing is based on a normal distribution. If the distribution is actually a fat-tailed one, then the model will under-price options that are far out of the money, since a 5- or 7-sigma event is much more likely than the normal distribution would predict.

Precision vs Accuracy

When you build models, the precision that they provide may lull you into a false sense of security. You maybe able to compute risk right down to the 8th decimal point. However, it is important to remember that the assumptions on which these models are build don’t led themselves to accuracy. At best, these models are guides to good behavior, and nothing more.

accuracy vs precision

Sources:
Fat-tailed distribution

Analysis: Bhavin Desai’s Bull Spread on ITC

Bhavin Desai of Motilal Oswal Securities was on CNBC saying that one may buy ITC 350 Call and advises shorting 360 Call. This is a 350/360 long call spread on ITC. Let’s see how the trade works.

The greeks

ITC Bull Spread Greeks

The 360 call has a θ of -145.36 and it the model premium is 3.04. This means that the time decay will make the option worthless in a couple of days. Not bad since you are an option seller.

The 350 call is already ITM (the stock closed at 352.70) and the last traded price, Rs. 6.3 is less than the model price of Rs. 7.49. Not a bad deal.

Payoff diagram at expiry

ITC Bull Spread P&L

ITC Bull Spread Breakevens

 
 
ITC needs to be above Rs. 354.35 at expiry for this trade to break-even. Max loss is the premium paid upfront (Rs. 4350)

The right trade for the wrong reasons?

The transcript on moneycontrol says:

ITC has had some amount of shorts right from the beginning of this expiry and since then it has not done anything and once again since yesterday’s trade we have been seeing some amount of long additions. So, a call spread or rather a bull call spread is something that can be advised.

We are not really sure what that means. The reason why you would put a bull spread on is if you are moderately bullish about the stock and want to mitigate the cost of buying the lower strike by selling a higher strike.

Reference

Buy ITC 350 Call, short 360 Call: Bhavin Desai

Options Liquidity

Liquidity (or the lack thereof)

Open interest is a measure of liquidity of a particular market. For each buyer of a contract there must be a seller. From the time the buyer or seller opens the contract until the counter-party closes it, that contract is considered ‘open’. OI refers to the total number of derivative contracts that have not been settled.

Other than a few select indices and stocks, there is absolutely no liquidity in the option market. Here’s a chart of the latest total OI for the nearest (April) expiry:

OI April

And its worse for the next series:

OI May

Bid-offer spread

The problem with trading illiquid options is that the bid-offer spread ends up killing your trade. Compare and contrast the spreads for UNITECH and DABUR:

UNITECH APRIL

UNITECH MAY

DABUR APR

DABUR MAY

Don’t stop at trade setups

When you conceive option trades, make sure you consider liquidity constraints. Otherwise, your trade is likely to remain on paper.

The liquidity footprint is not static. For example, RCOM, which was #8 in Jan is nowhere to be found in the liquid dozen in April:

OI Jan

Monitoring liquidity risk is as important as checking your deltas and P&L and can often make or break a trade.

Long Call Spread

Introduction

Suppose you are moderately bullish about a stock/index and you feel that it has room to run but its not going to be gangbusters. Then you could buy a call outright but that could be expensive. What you could do is buy the call and then sell a call at a higher strike to mitigate the cost of your (moderately) bullish outlook.

A long call spread (or a bull spread) contains two calls with the same expiration but different strikes. The strike of the short call is higher than the strike of the long call. The short call’s main purpose is to help pay for the long call’s upfront cost.

Example

long call spread

The Max loss is the net premium paid: Rs.1825.00
For the trade to break even, the NIFTY should end above 6786.50 at expiration (April 24).
The Max profit at expiration is Rs.3175.00

The greeks

The long call is more sensitive to changes in the underlying than the short call due to its ATM-ness.
All the greeks, δ, θ, κ, and λ are higher for the long call than for the short call.
The long-call will lose money faster to time decay than the short call.

By freezing all other inputs, you can observe θs across different strikes of the bull spread at different values of the NIFTY as expiry approaches:

Bull Spread Theta

Time decay is helpful to this position when it is profitable and harmful when it is loss-making.

Similarly, observe how δs of the bull spread at different values of the NIFTY as expiry approaches:

Bull Spread Delta

Exiting the trade

If the trade is profitable, allow time-decay to work for you. You could even hold this to expiration. If the position is moving against you, it is best to cut your losses.