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Depends on how you see it. For example, if you want to play for a sharp, imminent drop, you can buy puts. To determine which puts you want to buy it would help to know how far and how fast you think it will fall. If you're not sure of the timing or sharpness of the drop but are pretty sure...

What I would like is software that does NOT automatically label waves but, rather, lets you do it on the screen manually, so you can play around with different interpretations and see how they look. Kind of like an EW word processor. This would probably be a secondary feature in some...

Maybe it's reasonable for the government to protect the poor and uneducated against their own poor borrowing decisions. Hopefully we're a little more sophisticated crowd here. Actually, the thing I like most about IB is the lack of paternalism. While companies like Schwab restrict what you...

Note too that if you go to www.interactivebrokers.com Individuals > Trading > Shortable stocks > Country, then look up the stock, you will get the number of shares available for shorting and the exchanges - but no indicative rate. Why not put it here, where customers are specifically looking...

From its inception in 1990 the VIX never got above 50 until late last year. So actually, no one has much historical information on such spikes.

You're right. That's basically why we got taken - nobody could imagine that IB would charge that kind of interest without notification of any kind - without it even appearing on our statement. That's not an oversight on IB's part - they know exactly what they're doing. After this episode I...

I'm not saying this is their general everyday policy with all stocks. But if a stock becomes hard to borrow, they'll charge what the market will bear. And unless you know exactly where to look, you will be none the wiser. It's very well hidden. There is nothing on the account information you...

Okay thanks. Yeah, I don't know what's holding the vix up here. Habit I guess. After being in a range this long I'm surprised it's not a lot lower.

Rallymode, you seem to be saying that based on the current term structure, if you're bullish on the S&P, shorting the vix is a good bet, but if you're bearish, going long the vix is a poor bet. What is it about the current term structure that makes you say that?

Right. To add a little detail: vix options are European-style, exercisable only at expiration. Between now and then, the only underlying instrument available for delta hedging, gamma scalping, locking in profits etc. is that month's futures contract, which will settle at the same price as the...

Just please understand what you are buying. For all practical purposes a vix call is a call on that month's futures contract, NOT on the cash vix. At expiration the cash and the futures contract converge, but before that (and especially 2 or 3 months before that) they can be two completely...

Ah yes, Sears. Before you jump in, let me tell you about my Sears "free money" misadventure, which was most instructional. A few months ago I came across an amazing mispricing in Sears - or so it seemed. I could do the reverse conversion (reversal) for quite a bit of free money. The stock...

Martin above is correct, the approach suggested makes no sense. If you have a set of Excel option add-in functions such as Hoadley, this is easy to do directly.

You're talking about the December 2017 options? According to the link you posted there is zero open interest in those options. Since they have never traded, what historical values do you think you"ll get?

I completely agree.

It doesn't work that way. Here's what happens. Imagine it's Friday morning before a long weekend. Let's say xyz 90 calls have 30 days remaining. They're selling for .93 apiece, an IV of 37%. The following Tuesday, when the market opens next, there will be 26 days remaining. Let's imagine...

The near term, yes. But yesterday for example the April, May, June, July, August and September futures all closed at a premium to cash. During the period you mentioned, I don't believe the premium to cash went nearly that far back. I think you're right that what the OP saw is best explained...

To clarify: I meant to say that I can't recall a time when the vix was trading above 40% AND, at the same time, the next few months' futures contracts were trading at a premium to cash.

Hi Newguy: I'm attaching a 1-minute chart of the SPX vs the VIX showing that even yesterday the negative correlation held quite closely. That's not to say that every time the spx reaches, say, 850 the vix will be higher than every time the spx reaches 900. When the spx dropped to 850 last...

For me the most important part of the Hoadley tools is simply the Excel option functions, which allow me to set up a spreadsheet to look at things any way I want. You can't do that with option oracle or any off-the-shelf software. For example, let's say I want to look at the skew in Crude...