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Are their any studies of the relationship (if any) of the historical volatility of an option (considered as an asset itself; I am not talking about the volatility of the underlying) and its implied volatility?

On any one month, I have had about 3% of my total portfolio invested in calls. The rest is in stocks and cash. I almost always buy the calls 1 or 2 strikes OOM. The average return, on the call portfolio, for each month has been about 75% with a range of -15% to 130%. I think that besides the...

Obviously I am not on the same wavelength as some of the other posters. I am not a good stock picker. I rely on newsletters and columnists for determining undervalued plays. But what I do, works, at least it has since last April when I started with options. I think the key thing is that I...

An example will help. Let's look at the prices to close - open a 40-45 POG spread for various months. POG closed at 51.06 on Friday. March 4.6 - 5.2 June 3.9 - 4.9 Sept 3.5 - 4.6 Now if someone at the beginning of February entered the September spread for 1.4, should he hold on for a...

What you put in quotation marks is not a quote from me. What I am confident of is that I can pick a class of stocks, which with high probability, will go up at least 1 to 2 strike prices within a year. I cannot place when that happens with greater accuracy. My post just shows I am fishing for...

Well of course I would. The trouble is that for my class of stocks, there is a high probability that the advance will be within one year and the distribution of when it happens in that period is a uniform one. I am not smart enough to pick issues, a high percentage of which, will advance in...

Sorry guys. I respectfully disagree. For the class of stocks that I enter such spreads, the win ratio increases dramatically as I go further out in time. That is the point. I might have 100 going at the same time. I have noticed that after both legs go sufficiently itm, the price to enter...

I have been experimenting with vertical call spreads of the following kind. I buy a long term (now, usually Jan05), slightly OOM call and sell the same expiration call one or two strikes above the one I bought. I try to get a debit, at most 1/3 the difference between the strikes. I restrict...

I hope the cognoscenti here can comment on the latest from JC. In http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/jamesjcramer/10145491.html on Feb. 25, he recommended both the 12.5 calls and puts with both going for $2.5. I guess he thought the $5 long straddle was worth it. In...

The merits of buying Sepracor were debated on the Fox News Channel program Cashin' In. Adam Lashinsky thought it would pop big next week. Jonas Max Ferris thought the approval was already priced in.

I have been under the impression that European options trade at a discount to American options on a similar underlying. You should pay a little extra to have the privilege of exercising anytime. This seems to be true for XEO versus OEX options. However, when I checked DJX versus DIA, it...

"what happens when the stock is in an uptrend and the stock keeps touching the lower band" Is that mathematically possible? I don't recall ever seeing a Bollinger Band like that. As a stock rises, it seems to always go higher than the lower band. Stocks in an uptrend hugging the upper...

Vega, in which area was that thread posted? It doesn't seem to be a recent Options thread. I've had luck recently with newsletters that recommend small cap stocks, some of which are optionable. They are much cheaper than the options advisors letters. Of course it is up to ones skill in...

Gee Vega, I have a thousand page book on Option Strategies by McMillan. Should I be just a skeptical on what he teaches there? Did he leave out all the good stuff?

I get so much mail from these guys that I am just wondering if any of them are worthwhile. Don Fishback, Terry Allen, Ken Trester, Price Headley, George Fontanils, and of course Bernie Schaeffer, to name a few. Any of them have good products, as far as both education and successful trading?

Thank you Vega. I suppose the scenario I have in mind is that the stock drops in price before September expiration and I buy back the call at a profit. Since the stock is volatile, I suppose it will go back at least to the present level before October expiration. I do know that ITM...

Say I own an in the money October Call. I notice that the September call of the same strike has the same bid and ask as the one I own. Is there any good reason not to sell the September call at the bid? This situation is rather common with ITM options.

"as i said before, a famous options guy told me he didn't know of any retail customer consistently making money from options". So why was he an options guy? A claim that people can consistently make money when they manage it for other people, but can't do it in their own account, defies...

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. Do all the stand alone programs and websites have approximately the same functions? Do any have important features, apart from the interface, that others don't? One thing I don't want to have to do is maintain an historical database on my own machine...

I still have no idea of what these programs can do. Suppose I feed bullish and bearish watchlists of stock tickers to these programs. Can any analyse all all the possible spreads and make suggestions on which have the best risk/reward? Thanks.