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Good summary by Mo. Bank profits or morph? Hmm.. Will check out the "Writing options for a living" thread... OC is successful with his style of FOTM verticals. Agree its all about managing risk. And yes, we need to watch out for market crashes like Oct '87. Unless someone is just short...

You're surprised? Read the broker reviews, mate... you'll know.

Dear option traders, I understand the definition of "expectancy". And that any given option strategy has a less than zero expectancy over the long term. How does one go about creating positve expectancy in trading? Some strategies that Mo has pointed to recently are morphing into a...

Joe DiNapoli - had a chance to chat with him. Cool guy.

"Investors in hedge funds overseen by George Soros, Louis Bacon and Paul Jones would have made more money this year by buying shares of a stock-index mutual fund. " What kind of a statement is that? If they knew before the fact, then why didnt they???

Come on guys - buy, buy, buy! :)

There is only 1 thing that stops the rally everyday - the closing bell...

Go long till 07th Nov guys... what happens after that is anybody's guess...

[/B] Although I dont understand haircut, I shall try to explain why it is treated as "naked" in Reg T. You have a short back-month call or put. Although it is "covered" (ie. not "naked") till the middle month expiration, the broker (who uses Reg T) cant assume you will have enough cash...

There is no problem with regular flies in a retail account. Coach was exploring cross month flies that can be only performed with haircut margin (retail accounts have to use Reg T margin and the cross month fly is not a suitable position for most of us here).

Thanks for your post, Mo. Appreciate it.

I had a chance to chat with Joe Dinapoli briefly and he did mention that the pilot profession is the most conducive to trading.

LOL. That is a good one. One of the best around here at ET.

Thanks for your time and explanation. I come from the high-probability SPX FOTM credit spread background... slowly realizing the success probabilities are not that high as the delta show us and the risk/reward is bad too. Maybe its just not the market conditions (low VIX and a trending market)...

Thank you. The call IVs for Nov are extremely low - at 8.x %. Absolutely no premiums here, I guess. So aren't call sellers at a big disadvantage - given the recent move of the markets ie not being compensated enough for the risk taken?

Dear Coach, Can you please explain what causes the calls to be skewed? Is the market telling us something through these skews? Thank you.

Dear Mo, Thanks for your good posts and can no one in ET can match your ability to dig out (g)old posts :) EDIT: I had a couple of questions here: 1. In option 1 above, if the probability is low, then how would you actualy generate the return for the month? Am I right to assume you use...

What I meant is that the delta (due to the low VIX) is not reflecting the acutal chance due to the relentless push higher by the markets. Yes, it looks like the "fat tail" so far - just look at the Nasdaq chart from April till now. Extreme volatility - "V" reversal off the bottom. But the...

My concern is that we're selling under-priced call spreads in a bull market, as part of the iron condor. Why under-priced (for seller)? Because VIX is so low and the probability of the short call ending up ITM is quite high (due to the bull market run). Even in the wild bubble chase days, VIX...

Pardon my ignorance, but would you be kind enough to explain that in the context of the SPX IC / DD? By trading a short iron condor, the premise is: the market remains within the short strikes (direction bias) AND the OTM options are overpriced (volatility bias). But the problem here is...