Delta? what's better?

[ironchef]

Thanks for this insight, yes I did buy just before earnings - the premiums on this have been really high. What you say is completely logical to me, but understanding how to play IV is tough because you can't really track changes in IV for a given stock. Actually, in the end I did pretty close to scratch, I paid a little more for the calls.

I am so used to trading stocks where there is no IV that I have no feel for how to factor it in.

If you are a mom and pop amateur retail like some of us here, my humble advice is leave trading IV to the pros and stay with simple directional bets, especially since you seemed like an experienced underlying trader:

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/aapl-earnings-i-bought-two-215-weekly-calls-at-2-49.334611/

 

[VolSkewTrader]

Thanks for this insight, yes I did buy just before earnings - the premiums on this have been really high. What you say is completely logical to me, but understanding how to play IV is tough because you can't really track changes in IV for a given stock. Actually, in the end I did pretty close to scratch, I paid a little more for the calls.

I am so used to trading stocks where there is no IV that I have no feel for how to factor it in.

A good free site where you can track individual stock IV as well as historical vol is Market Chameleon:

https://marketchameleon.com/Overview/BYND/IV/

I would stick with what you're good at, which is trading stocks it sounds like. Options can be a high maintenance headache with all the greeks and hidden risk. I actually wish I could go back to trading butterflies, condors, double-flies, and calendars on the Eurodollar futures yield curve, which is very similar to options trading, but without any greek risk...just delta.

 

[TradingDemystified]

understanding how to play IV is tough because you can't really track changes in IV for a given stock.

I don't know which platform you use but IV is trackable in most brokerage platforms.

If you want to use options you will need to learn IV and most (if not all) of its intricacies. If you feel that it is too complex or not sufficiently rewarding for your efforts it might be better for you to stick to only equities (which is a perfectly valid alternative).