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I also once did a trial of Optionvue and had very much the same impression. I think the problem is that over the years they've kept adding one thing on top of another to the extent that it's become one big unnavigable mass of legacy upon legacy upon legacy. I had trouble making the simplest...

I just saw them for the first time at the show in Chicago last week. This is a very sophisticated platform for high-volume market makers etc. They compete directly with RTS, Orc, and Pro Opticus. As I understand it you can't use this to trade over the internet, you must be connected directly...

Heywood - I don't think that was meant to be a snotty response. I was going to post something similar, but MTE beat me to it. You say that haven't been able to find exactly what you're looking for, but you never say what you ARE looking for. You ask if Tradestation 8.3 would suffice, which...

Someone just asked me if I knew of any online sites or programs that have option simulators for commodity futures options. Does anyone know of any such thing? Thanks.

You establish the historical norm of strike-to-strike volatility relationships in a particular contract - in other words, the historical norm of the skew - simply by observing it over a period of time. In index options - the SPY for example or options on the S&P500 futures - the IV of each...

No, completely different approach. In this approach you couldn't care less what the actual or historic volatility is. Doesn't matter a bit. You simply see that one option is overpriced relative to another option, giving you the opportunity to buy the underpriced option and sell the overpriced...

One approach to trading options is to look for pricing relationships between options that are out of whack, based on historical norms. The best way IMHO to compare the price of two options not at the same strike, or not with the same expiration date, is to compare their implied volatilities.

Let's assume for a moment that all the assumptions on which pricing models are based are correct, and that if you feed your model the correct information, it will give you the fair price of an option. All the inputs are obvious except one - volatility. Which volatility should you use? The...

Here's what you need to do. Calculate the implied volatility of your option at the close on day 1. Then, using that volatility, calculate the theoretical price of the option using the closing price of the underlying on the second day. Don't forget to subtract 1 day from "days remaining until...

This is good advice - don't get suckered into thinking that you can buy success with super-expensive software or courses. Doesn't work that way. You don't have to limit yourself to free stuff, but you don't need to spend a fortune either. Hoadley recently upgraded his software to support IB...

This is not a recommendation. But I would say that the probability of large mining companies such as FCX breaking down significantly below their recent lows in the near future seems remote. You can add seasonalities to all the other reasons I mentioned. But most important really to my sense...

If someone held a gun to my head, I'd probably short puts on big mining stocks. By many accounts we are still in a long-term, secular bull market in natural resources, and the selloff in these stocks has been way overdone - many have lost 80% of their value in just a few months. That selloff...

Comintel, I like your optimism! Looking for ways to make money off wide bid-ask spreads as a retail trader definitely makes you a "cup half-full" kind of guy. I really do like your idea. The problem as I see it is that the electronic system for trading commodity options is still not very...

What kind of analytics do you need? If you have any ability with Excel you can probably building something that suits your needs as well or better using a set of Excel add-in option functions. The one I use is Hoadley www.hoadley.net, which comes with lotsa useful stuff. The whole package...

Of course you should be willing to spend reasonable amounts on education, but it's not necessary or productive to spend huge sums. There's a company that offers an "options Ph.D." program for some $25,000 for example. If you want to spend that kind of money learning options, you'll learn lots...

I see the problem. You're comparing the cash VIX - a VERY short-term indicator - with the IV of options 8 months out. Two COMPLETELY different things. If you want a meaningful, relevant comparison, you would have to compare June VIX futures with the IV of those June options. The June VIX...

There's no edge for a retail trader in low-volume contracts. You're on the wrong side of the wide bid-ask spreads. Stick with the liquid stuff with tight bid-ask spreads.

Newguy - if you can tell me the date you initially looked and IV was 70, and the month of the 950 calls you are looking at, I can give a more precise answer.

A better comparison would be to compare the IV of the ATM options when the vix was at 70, with the IV of the ATM options when the vix is at 55. If you compare a strike that is way above-the-money (the 950s then) with a strike that is below the money (the 950s now), you are comparing apples...

Ha ha - you're as persistent as ever maw. I guess at the end of the day you either see the sense in Taleb's article or you don't. I just don't. Apparently you do. I suppose we'll have to leave it at that. The one area where I have no opinion is whether or not a similar model existed...