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lol, okay, I'll stop my quibbling here. When I talk to other traders, I would say I have an (iron) condor or (iron) buttefly position on, sometimes leaving out or accidentally putting in the iron word, but always meaning long the wings and short the body. They probably know me well enough to...

I use the terms condor and iron condor interchangeably. There's no question about what buying or being long a condor position means - long the wings, short the body. So I just use the same for iron condor - long means owning the wings. "I have an iron condor position on" means I'm long the...

Don't be too cavalier about selling naked options - use only a very small amount relative to your portfolio if you decide to do so. I'm not talking about cash-secured puts, but more speculative trades like short straddles and strangles on index options. Trading large volumes requires...

Indeed possible, even at the volume level of IB's base rate. I have both ToS and IB. I trade mainly with ToS, reserving IB for their analytics. :cool:

Instead of buying the stock and selling DITM covered calls, you could just sell OTM puts, which is an equivalent position but superior in terms of margin, slippage, and transaction costs (assuming your account allows cash-secured puts). The above position is the safest covered call position...

Nice day for your calendar trades! Yes, the further OTM the calendar, the larger the potential reward. The two trades are quite different because of the strike prices. The 75 strike is so far away that I think it behaves more like long put options (compare your 50/40 to +6 SPY DEC 105P)...

Is that 25/25 the SPY DEC 85P/SEP 85P spread? When I look at the prices, I see the 25/25 as much cheaper than the 50/40 SPY DEC 75P/SEP 75P spread. Using the closing prices, the 25/25 costs $2,700 and the 50/40 costs $3,570 at midpoint prices.

Your position: +50 SPY DEC 75P -40 SPY SEP 75P The 75 strike price is very far away, over 30% from the current price! I wouldn't add extra puts here - just do a straight calendar. If you want to be covered from an utter market collapse, then maybe add 2 extra, but 10 seems unnecessary at...

I've had short options more than a penny ITM at expiration that I didn't get assigned. With the closing price so close to the strike price, I wouldn't count on anything (and I definitely wouldn't DEPEND on getting or not getting assigned). Just wait until Sunday to see what happens.

Regarding automatic exercise, the value used will be the close of the regular trading session, so it will be 4.01. The value is so close to the strike price that you can easily get assigned. Wait until Sunday to find out.

There are many strategies available in a high vol environment - ways to make cheap bets with lots of potential. As for condors, I think iron condors are fine in this environment (short strangles are too risky for me). If vols go down, you can make a large percentage in a very short...

A trade I like (and did last week), which is similar, is to do a reverse ratio diagonal on the call side. Make sure your long strike is much closer than the short strike. You're short vega, but gamma is positive in case there's a huge turn around.

Selling premium on boring WMT has been the most consistent income for me for over a decade.

This is a very unfortunate situation, and IMO ridiculous. Whatever algortihm they have should have more smarts than random liquidations from outrageous bid/ask spreads. Were the bid/ask spreads crazy with SPX options also? If I had an account at IB (I actually do), and I put all my cash...

They are synthetically equivalent. Naked Puts require less margin/capital so more leverage is possible.

Cash is cash. That's why cash-secured puts are allowed, as well as covered calls (already put up the capital for the underlying stock). Spreads are different, as the short option is covered by another option - the capital isn't put up yet, and there would be a margin call, which should be in...

How much did the stock move within the 20 minutes? I've legged into these types of trades before. You just can't put this on as a single iron butterfly trade for a credit of 1 or greater.

Your main risk then is that the stock moves strongly up and hits the 590 strike, the point where you say you will buy the stock. At this point, you have a covered call position with ATM call options that you sold for probably much less than it's worth now. The whole risk now is to the...

They don't? :)

ATM Butterflies should cost the most. If you want to be neutral in direction, then choose ATM Butterflies. Use higher strike price Butterflies for bullish bias and lower strike price ones for bearish bias. OTM put Butterfly is equivalent to ITM call Butterfly and vice versa (ATM is also...