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I trade with TOS and am a big fan of their platform. I have been thinking about switching over to IB but was afraid of their cancellation/modification fee. Is it really true that they don’t charge it for spreads? I do a quite a bit of modifications when entering spreads so it would be a...

I spent more time then I would have liked selling vertical SPX spreads today. I started at the mid which I can usually get filled at with TOS and slowly moved to the natural. There were times when 5+ minutes would pass and I would be at the natural or lower and never get filled . . . Just...

Does anyone know the intraday and overnight margin requirements?

ET99, My hat off to you for this thread . . I have been trading credit spreads on weekly options as I cannot stare at my computer all day during work and was looking for something after work to trade. Lots of great information here. I plan to start paper trading this in the near future...

I saw a post somewhere on ET a while ago where someone researched the Thursday closing price on SPX and the opening Friday SET value. I believe the largest gap was like 20 or 30 points so becareful about holding SPX until Friday morning.

Not having ever traded on it, it looks identical to the optionhouse platform and if I remember correctly it might even reference option house in the copyright detail. They rolled it out before they could support admin functions like funding the account. I moved my IRA over there from Scottrade...

Are there any US daily options . . I trade weeklies but have never heard of dailies . . .

It is actually based off the SET value, not the opening prints which can be very different. What happens when Friday is a holiday or the first of the month (My issue is when the expiration week is atypical)?

I remember reading a similar post on ET before but I can’t find it. I want to compare the SPX weekly Thursday close price to the Friday SET calculation and then compare that to the VIX (I understand the VIX is based on futures volatility but it will have to do for now). I can pull the SPX...

Thanks l2tradr . . that was along the lines of what I was looking for

I tried to have them match OptionsHouse but they wouldnt. They offered me 1.50 per contract and after asking them to match zecco's they gave me tradekings rates without even knowing my volume so I would say there is a chance . .

I was wondering if many traders use leverage beyond what the normal financial products allow (options, futures, etc.) by taking out bank loans, lines of credit, etc. I specifically trade vertical spreads and margin is limited to what you can lose which is a good thing but I was wondering how...

I was just wondering what are acceptable benchmarks for various spread types (i.e. vertical and calendar spreads on the S&P 500 (SPX)? I am trying to calculate my Sharpe ratio and I am not sure what I should be benchmarking myself against. Additionally, is there an industry period you should...

Wanted to give this post a bump because I have the same question. Any spread traders out there with any advice?

Reading through the Career Trader section it looks like a lot of people trade commodities full time. Does anyone know of full timers that trade vertical spreads are their primary strategy? It doesn’t seem to be one of the more popular strategies . . .

Whats wrong with making 2.5% a week?

But without volume the MM's spreads will be wide thus making it difficult to turn a profit without a large move.

I am aware of what I am trading. I make it a point to do as much research on the front end as to lessen the financial cost of ignorance. One question I do have is how are markets liquid without volume . . . If the VIX rises by one point and the delta is .60 (ignoring the other Greeks for...

I have been living trading credit spreads for a number of months on SPX and have started paper trading long puts and calls on the VIX. I just jumped into my first live VIX trade by going long the Mar 20 call @ 5.05. I noticed that volume is pretty low at 176 for the Mar contracts and as I...

Thanks Heiasafari. I completely forgot last week was part of the monthly