Testimonials

February 14, 2013

Baseball, Buying a Car and Iron Condors

Filed under: Options Education — Tags: , , , , , , — Dan Passarelli @ 8:14 am

With spring training right around the corner, traders should ask themselves this question; have you ever noticed a baseball player warming up before a game? Or watched footage of a baseball player at practice? What are they doing? Swinging a bat. Throwing and catching balls. Running bases. Working on the fundamentals. To be good at anything requires learning the fundamentals and constantly working on them throughout your career.

Option trading is no different. Even traders who have traded for years, who trade complex strategies return to the fundamentals to make their trading decisions. Take trading iron condors. Trading iron condors requires utilizing the fundamentals. Traders who are trading iron condors are trading a fairly complex, four-legged option strategy. They need to be able to visualize the strategy in order to analyze it and ultimately decide whether or not they should be trading iron condors or something else.

Traders trading iron condors should consider the spread from several different perspectives. Specifically, they should consider it as combinations of other spreads. When a trader is trading iron condors, the trader is in fact trading a pair of credit spreads. An iron condor is a put credit spread combined with a call credit spread. That’s one way to look at it.

Trading iron condors can also be considered from the strangle-trading perspective. An iron condor is a short strangle combined with a long strangle with wider strikes. The profit (and risk) comes from the short strangle, while the long one provides protection.

An iron condor can also be thought of as four individual option positions. Traders trading iron condors have a position in a long put, in a short put, in a short call and in a long call. Thinking of trading iron condors from this perspective, in particular, can help traders make adjustment and closing decision more effectively.

And, of course, an iron condor is, well, an iron condor! It is a single strategy in which the risk can be observed on a P&(L) diagram or through the greeks.

This strategy-break-down technique is not just suited for trading iron condors, but for trading all multi-legged strategies. It is an effective analysis technique akin to how car shoppers consider buying a car. They look at the front; then walk around to the side, then the back; they look under the hood and at the interior. All the while, they are considering this one purchase, but just from many different perspectives.

John Kmiecik

Senior Options Instructor

Market Taker Mentoring

August 18, 2011

If I’d Meant That, I’d Have Said That

Filed under: Options Education — Tags: , , , , , , — Dan Passarelli @ 11:26 am

To the new option trader, it often seems as if he has entered into the terra incognita of the derivatives world through Alice’s looking glass. Engaging the natives in conversation quickly results in encountering colorful characters who appear not to recognize the same reality from which the traveler has arrived. For those who have chosen to enter this new world, Alice’s conversation with Humpty Dumpty seems particularly familiar wherein he declares: `When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

The nomenclature of options is boundlessly confusing.  While the casual visitor may only notice the broad categories of puts and calls, the serious student soon will come to realize that the detailed nomenclature is confusing and results from the inescapable fact that options have more moving parts than do stocks.   When initiating a stock position, the choices are two:  buy or sell the issue. When initiating an options position, the choices are numerous and not mutually exclusive. The selection of the particular series to trade and the anatomic structure in which to place it is often nuanced.

An individual option’s value is a function of three main factors: price of the underlying, time to expiration, and implied volatility. Furthermore the individual options can be combined into complex spreads composed of multiple positions in an almost limitless variety. It is from this abundance of choice that the word salad of option terminology arises.

I find the terminology paradoxically to find its maximum point of obfuscation when used to describe one of the basic building blocks of options, the vertical spread. Verticals represent a two-legged category of spreads in which one option is bought and an option of a different strike is sold; both positions are taken in the same series month and in the same type, either puts or calls. Strike selection determines the directional bias of the trade as well as the credit or debit status.  Bullish and bearish trades are easily constructed in both puts and calls.

This simple spread results in a chaotic and confusing panoply of names including: bull call spread, call debit spread, bear call spread, call credit spread, bear put spread, put credit spread, bull put spread, bull call vertical, bear call vertical, bull put vertical, and bear put vertical. As if this collection of a dozen names describing four basic trades were not sufficiently opaque, many traders use an implied shorthand description. For example, they may refer to opening a call credit spread as “selling a call vertical”; conversely opening a call debit spread is often referenced as “buying a call vertical”.  The directional bias of the trade is apparent to those having been shown the “secret handshake” by the spread type, call or put, used and the credit or debit status of the opening cash flow.

Unfortunately there is no easy resolution to this nomenclature nightmare.  Various traders use the terms inconsistently and variably for no apparent logical reason.  Such is everyday life in the world of options.