Recent content by Vol Guy

Don't know the lingo: street gamma? individual stock gamma?

Well, I won't argue with the "is the return too high" part, but the comment about the volatility of the P & L is something I wanted to know about. The positive about the strategy is it's natural positive expectancy. BUT, the nreturns can be a little lumpy.

Here's my thought. Sell expensive IV puts on cheap stocks (or ones that have recently been clobbered - but are basing). Create a deversified portfolio of these things (20 or 30 positions), and hedge them with long index puts. There could be several ways to do this, and I am not wed to any one...

Well, I probably have more thoughts on the responses so far. But my observation is either that I am incredibly naive to believe the prop firms want to help me if I can help them. And that some people on these boards are less cynical than average and would like to be helpful answers. Some...

OK. Thank you. Another dumb question. Why is the minimum that you specify so high, when I see that IB, for instance, has a lower margin account minimum than 125K?

Didn't really answer my question, now, did you? I was afraid of this. After having read these forums for awhile, it's clear that 95% of these posts are of the "passive/aggressive, hide behind your handle, don't know shit but read it in a book" variety. Of course, some of us were raised with a...

Question: What are the best remote options-focused prop firms that will let you trade your own strategy? I'll admit it. I'm new to this world (prop trading). I have a strategy that has been borne out of a decade of investment experience, as an equity trader, analyst, and portfolio manager...

Yes, Mysticman, I have changed my position a little bit on pos. vs neg. dispersion. I've tried neg dispersion a few months, and can definitely see problems I didn't see before hand. I am a total newbie to options, but not to investing broadly. The outliers that are so necessary in the pos...

My two cents worth: Remember here that we're trying to do a tricky thing. We want a basket of stocks, like IV says, that provides a balance of relicating the movement of the index, but at the same time offerering the opportunity for a bunch of uncorrelated dispersion. This strategy tries to...

Pro's and Egar are definitely advocating more than 15 or 20 names. They somethjing like 40% of names(!!). Perhaps that does seem like a little much too. And in addition to favorable SV/IV ratios, Larry MacMillan, in searching for attractive straddle candidates, advocates looking for cheap...

The reason the +dispersion did not make intuitive sense was a just a blind spot in my understanding of options. More education, including a couple of months actually in the market solved the blind spot. One down, two million to go!

So by your way of thinking, IV Trader, a reverse dispersion should never be done? Is there any conditions where you think it does make sense? I'm not being confrontational here, I'm not sure i disagree. Have you tried it both ways? (no smart-ass comments please)

Actually wish I'd found the ET forum before I started trading this strategy. In some ways it has opened my eyes to the nuances that have been spoken of about the broad strategy of volatility arbitrage. My whole thinking in this strategy, was first of all, I wanted to be net seller of...

Hi everyone, I have been lurking around this forum for about a month. I'm very new to options., although I've been "noodling them" for a few years now. Although I'm an equity analyst for a buy-side firm, this type of investing is NOT going to grow a nest-egg fast enough for my liking...