Recent content by LAtrojan

Hi all - Do we earn interest on the proceeds of a short sale of an option? For example, if I were to sell a Jan11 option for say $500. Do I earn interest on the $500? Thanks!

Hi all - I noticed some unusual activity in the October WFC 13/18 puts on Friday. Over 25000 contracts transacted with an open interest of 3029 and 2605 respectively. It looks like someone had a put spread going and they decided to close it on Friday. Can anyone add more insight? Thx!

Thank you all for the replies. To those who say to close those positions and look for new ones, I'd love to do that. But the closer you get to expiration, the harder it is to find a decent premium without being closer to the money (and hence more risk).

I sell slightly out of the money puts every month. I do it on quality stocks I wouldn't mind owning at those lower prices. My question is, when do you guys take your profits and close the position? I have a bunch of May puts that are now way out of the money. A lot of people subscribe to...

A lot of stocks have have different options symbols. They call them Standard and Non standard. They use them when companies have stock splits or pay out dividends that were not previously announced.

I only have 200-300 trades a year and I use the Schedule D that IB automatically generates for you.

If you're short a straddle, you only make money if the stock does not move more than the sum of the premiums you collected. So if the stock runs up or tanks, you're in the red!

What I've done is download historical data for AAPL and looked at how AAPL behaved on the day after earnings. I got historical earnings dates from MSN. I compare Q2 earnings behavior since there might be some seasonality in the earnings. So basically I saw that in the last few years, AAPL...

Does anyone sell straddles prior to earnings? It's been pretty profitable so far this earnings season with GOOG, IBM and looks like AAPL too! I sold the AAPL $125 straddle 30 mins before the close for $13.15. The stock is trading AH very close to $125! I won't start celebrating until the...

But for the same price on the underlying what moves IV? Is it supply and demand of the options? Thanks for the reply.

I sold the IBM 100 straddle yesterday pre-earnings for a net credit of $9.10. The move in the stock was minimal after the earnings. I closed the position in the morning for a profit of $1.80. I noticed that if I had waited an hour longer I could've squeezed out another $0.90 with the stock...