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Thank you all very much! Good feedback from all of you. To Spindr0: What a generous, thorough reply! The first question that comes to mind, is how can we broaden the profit zone of condors? Judging by some of the responses, notably Maverick74's, it would seem impossible using natural quotes...

I was reading the interview with Tony Saliba in Schwager's __Market Wizards__ about how Saliba would "string together" butterflies to create a broad profit zone. I can manage to produce nice, broad profit zones with calendar spreads (at the cost of excessively long vega exposure), but trying to...

Hi traders, Certain futures markets are just unsuited for the calendar spread option strategy. In an article in August, 2010 of Active Trader magazine, Dennis Dzekounoff, explains how the different expiries of the VIX contract are so un-correlated as to behave almost like completely...

Both, Spindr0. I prefer the types of trades that offer multiple ways to profit. With straddles and short calendars, we can profit off of both changes in IV and delta creation. That is rather appealing, but I'm not certain that those two structures are the best of their kind. Are there better...

Thank you. One of the more sensible remarks made on this thread. She's fit to be president alright...of the PTA. Actually no, she'd probably tell all the girls to be mavericks and pop out those babies. Better than pregnancy termination, unthinkable act of evil that that is. I just figured...

I know this thread is mostly about execution, but another reason to trade ES instead of SPY is the enormous difference in taxation of profits (if you're lucky enough to have any). Being a futures contract, ES is taxed under IRC 1256, whereby short term capital gains are taxed at 23%, as...

This thing may be dead and buried, but I thought I'd lend my two cents one month later, as I didn't have the chance until now. I don't advocate Dividendium, and in fact found their offering unsuited to my purposes, and subsequently unsubscribed. However, I do think they deliver on what...

Insightful post, spindr0. I'm in complete agreement that IV outlook must be factored into the choice of strategies. I was actually saying as much in my own, perhaps excessively lengthy original post. What I was hoping to get going here is a small chat about which strategies could be turned to...

Anyone who can afford to do 10,000 straddles should just retire from trading and get a life. :D

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I think the spot would definitely be a better choice than the mini futures contracts, as liquidity is incomparably better in the spot. Furthermore, size can be as precise as a single monetary unit. I tried doing a bit of scalping in my paper account today...

Hello folks, That gamma scalping is no panacea has been made abundantly clear by the numerous threads on the topic in this forum. By the same token, I've traded enough long straddles to appreciate the potential merit of gamma scalping, having witnessed profit mount today, dissipate tomorrow...

I feel like one of the drawbacks to long gamma scalping with futures options is the difficulty in being precise in neutralizing delta. With stocks, when the positions becomes long by, say, 126 shares, we can short precisely 126 shares. With futures, we can't short 1.26 contracts. If we really...

I would think a long calendar spread would be a good trade in an environment of increasing IV, which is common approaching the quarterly earnings announcement. Immediately following the announcement, IV often decreases sharply. Thus, you could do a long calendar in the weeks approaching...

Thanks DEF for responding. I'm not totally sure I understand what you are saying. Are you suggesting the fills would be so bad with Eoption as to negate the savings on the commissions?

Hi folks, Has anyone here had any experience with eoption.com? At $3 + $0.10 per contract they have by far the lowest commissions of any brokerage I have ever discovered. Does anyone know about these guys? How can they do it for so little, or are we all just being gouged by the many other...

That is the strategy exactly. I wouldn't personally be able to find undervalued puts just by nosing around for them, but a screening service with the right algorithm could possibly find and publish them. [B] Agreed, success in this latter strategy doesn't validate naked put selling...

IV by definition refers to the expected price range of the underlier over a given time-frame. It's not necessarily anything to hang your trading on, however. Just take a look at how predictive the VIX tends to be. It seems to refer only to the present moment, even though it is supposed to...

Yeah, as some have said, the Starbucks test is a bit too specific to serve as a litmus test for a**hole status. I've known some very fussy, demanding eaters/drinkers who are very sweet and others who were total assholes. Mostly, the real creeps I know are not fussy eaters. As I recall, the...

I got my own trade mixed up! My apologies to you spindr0 and anyone else that read my post above. I didn't sell a call. I simply bought the underlying and a quite deep in the money put where there was very little time premium. No call was sold to finance the put. I have no idea why I...

Premium value is effected by factors other than changes in the spot price of the underlying. Delta predicts how changes in the spot price effect premium, as you have pointed out. One of the other first order Greeks, Vega, predicts the change in the premium value with every 1% move in implied...