Tag: options

The One Man Insurance Company

I am recently reading a book bombastically titled “The Option Trader’s Hedge Fund” (Amazon). In that the author says that the best way to look at option trading is to think of it as an insurance business. So if you are an options trader, you should think of yourself as The One Man Insurance Company (TOMIC).

TOMIC

It sort of makes sense because what you are doing when you are trading options anyways? You are buying and selling insurance of some kind with different co-pays and terms. If you are hedging your positions then you are “reinsuring”, etc.

The chapter on volatility was insightful. It discusses the impact of ATM options price in the near term, volatility skew, and term structure on implied volatility. Its a useful framework to have.

Overall, its an interesting book that’s worth a read.

Categories Tags

Algorithms At Work!

The last few weeks have been brutal to cash-only equity investors. The NIFTY has gone nowhere even while swinging wildly on a daily basis. Is there a way to turn a profit given what has been going on?

Yes! With the help of option strategies it is possible to profit from stocks you expect to go side-ways. Here’s what we did.

ACC technical analysis chart

StockViz Option Ideas drew our attention to the ACC Long Call Butterfly around the 10th of December. The stock was under a pennant formation, and was on a decline from its 5 day high of Rs. 1445. With Bollinger bands enveloping 1450 and 1360 levels, there was a strong possibility that that stock was going to be range-bound for a bit.

We entered a long call butterfly trade for December expiry. With an outlay of Rs. 26,750 we bought 5 contracts (market lot of 250).

ACC long call butterfly trade P&L

The payoff chart for our butterfly looked something like this:

ACC long call butterfly payoff

With ACC ending at Rs. 1402 at option expiry, the position made us Rs. 9,950 (38%) profit in just 17 days even as equity holders sucked wind.

Here’s what your New Year’s resolution should be:

KEEP CALM trade options

call us qr code

[stockquote]ACC[/stockquote]

Categories Tags ,

Quantitative Option Strategies

The markets have been all around the place in the last few week. And this has created a lot of confusion in the minds of traders too. So, how do you make money in such scenarios?

The best way to be in the markets right now is to get exposure in the derivatives market. Here are a few options trade that made 33%, 19% and 7% when the markets went nowhere last week.

 ACC options position

LT Options position

BATAINDIA Options position

Even when the respective stocks were -1%, -2% and -3.3% there options position have made much more profits.

The ideas based on the algorithms helped us take these positions and carve out the profits even under such market conditions. You too can use these ideas to get more greens in your portfolio.

Open a StockViz Demat account today and go Pro!

call us qr code
Categories Tags ,

Volatility Surface: RELIANCE

image

Volatility surfaces is an important trading tool for option traders. Here’s a vol chart of RELIANCE OCT25 options. Note the spike in IV around earnings announcement, the fall-off in IV above and below the ATM strike (800), the spike in vol and the dramatic drop in lambda due the “fat finger” trade on the 5th. [stockquote]RELIANCE[/stockquote]

Our option strategy model, however, is not flashing any profitable trades in this scrip right now, owing to the uncertainty around the trend of the underlying and the high IV around earnings season.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories Tags ,