does anybody manage a book of options in interactive brokers

Quote from TskTsk:

The risk graphs in TWS sucks tbh. If you want a proper risk graph, hook TWS up to Excel and graph it there.

As for plotting real vs impl, open up the underlyer in a chart, rightclick the chart - > chart parametres -> check the tickbox for "option implied volatility" and "historical volatility".

Be aware that the measures for historical volatility are a joke, as they average it over 30 days. So if there is a huge gap one day, realized vola will appear super-high for all 30 days despite only being high in the gap area.
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risknav sucks quite a bit, but they're improved the analytics as it seems they now mark to the mid. It's not terribly straightforward to add underlying, but I guess it's easier to simply add/subtract 100D from the what-if.
 
Quote from cdcaveman:

wow.. optionsoracle is free and its pretty bad ass.. i'm looking for draw backs as we speak!
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omg the desktop options stratigy calculator is so freaking annoying! i can't get it to work right for me.. trying website
 
I am with OptionHouse and thinking of a move to IB

My concern has always been their platform.... Don't care about pretty graphics and neat stuff... just a no-nonesense option platform with all the greeks laid out nicely,

Anything requiring programming is beyond me.

But you guys are scaring me,,,,

Thanks
 
I use Etrade, whose options stuff sucks. But then I built all my own risk models using excel. It's nice because I can change things instantly when I want to see something differently or if I want to reorganize the data. So I created different portfolios within the same account and can watch the trades that way. It requires some VBA, but it isn't crazy.

I think if you want to trade vol, you have to do the analysis tools yourself. Everyone looks at 30day realized vol. You need to look at it slightly differently and there aren't really good option tools to do that. Even bloomberg is pretty pedestrian in terms of its option analysis tools.
 
I would recommend that you build your own volatility analysis tools in something like excel. However, if you want some cool stuff that is already built; check out Hoadley.

Or you can always open a TOS account, fund it with $3500, and just use it for analysis. Then use IB for trading.
 
Quote from cdcaveman:

So what's bad about 30 day vol to you... and what do you tweak to get a better reading
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30 day is fine, when used with other durations as well. As mentioned above, a big outlier one-day move will show up as elevated vol. Run 10, 30, 60, 90, 120, etc. numbers and place them in the context of a vol cone.
 
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