You should research how stop limit orders work...cause you are in for a very bad surprise thinking the way you do.
Are naked puts really this safe????
- Thread starter RedDuke
- Start date
You should research how stop limit orders work...cause you are in for a very bad surprise thinking the way you do.
Yeah, thanks. Stop limit orders do not suit here. Right.
Skews in general predate the '87 crash. I don't know what the index option skews looked like before then, but it's hard to believe that every strike traded at exactly the same IV.
When I first stepped into the T-bond options pit in early 1984 there was sort of a skew - the ATM strike traded at a discount to everything else. I soon learned to buy the ATM's, sell the next strike out, and maintain it delta and gamma neutral until the futures moved to the next strike, and the pattern reversed. Pretty easy money.
The "modern" T-bond skew - somewhat resembling the SPX skew with the puts trading at a premium - was born in I think 1985. Charlie Cottle has a great section detailing the birth of the T-bond skew in one of his books. He has an amazing memory and I can verify that all his T-bond pit anecdotes are spot-on.
What I think happened - and this is just my opinion and feeling - is that prior to that time traders put excessive trust in pricing models. So they were overly willing to sell options that the model said were overpriced. When T-bonds hit bottom, the demand for puts became such that it "broke the back" of those who naively were anxious to sell puts for a small premium over what their model said they were worth. Perhaps something similar happened in index options during the '87 crash. That would make perfect sense.
When I first walked into the Comex gold and silver options pits in April 1987, that skew was firmly in place - OTM calls sold for a premium.
So it may be true that in the very early days of commodity options skews were somewhat "artifically suppressed" by a naive over-reliance and trust in pricing models. Once the bloom was off that rose however, the natural desire for "portfolio insurance" asserted itself and skews began to "float" to reflect it.
Ok but only if I can get it at the maximum extension outwards so I can profit from the reversion to the mean.
Fascinating. Sounds like a licence to print money. How on earth do you stay delta AND gamma neutral ???
In retrospect, it was indeed a license to print money. But at the time it was all so new that we all did it very tentatively - wondering what we were missing, waiting for the other shoe to drop. At the time there was no one with more experience than us who could tell us it was safe.
How do you get delta and gamma neutral? Buy options here and sell them there at a ratio that makes you gamma neutral. Then figure out your deltas and make up the difference with the underlying. In options on futures the underlying plays a much bigger role than it does in options on stock.
Given that all options have Gamma and all options have Delta, I cannot see for the life of me how you can achieve Delta AND Gamma neutral AND make a decent profit ??? The only spread I can think of that would achieve Delta/Gamma neutral is a box. But then that would only earn the risk-free interest rate, and not the easy money you made.
Perhaps a worked example when you get a spare minute ? Much appreciated.
There are 45 days remaining until option expiration. Futures are at 104-16/32. I buy 100 of the 104 calls at a volatility of 8%. I sell enough 106 calls to be gamma neutral, selling them at a volatility of 8.3%. I figure out my total position delta, and make a trade in the underlying to become delta neutral.
T-bonds move up to 105-16/32. Now the 106's - which I'm short - are at the money and their IV drops. The 104's - which I'm long - are OTM and their IV now goes up. The 106's now are trading at a volatility of 8%, the 104's at a volatility of 8.3%.
I buy in my short 106's at 8%, sell my long 104's at 8.3%, and take off the futures. I guarantee you I have a profit.
Try working out a scenario for yourself. Great exercise - Shelly Natenburg and Charlie Cottle were doing it at the time - that's how they learned.
If you can't make it work, come back and we'll figure out why.