A few of you mentioned straddles, and they do look surprisingly sold off on the S&P. I think this shows the extent to which the market has written down the probability of a Fed move tomorrow. The chart below is the historical cost to enter into 1m straddles on the S&P 500 going back to 2009 (left axis shows the straddle cost as a percentage of the S&P 500). 1m straddles costed 6-8% only a week or two ago, and now they are trading at about 4%. For what it's worth, the S&P has moved in excess of 4% over a 1m period only 30% of the time going back to 2000. I used the 10/16 expiry.
Thought it was an interesting chart. For those curious, I created it and did the back-test with the new options analytics package at www.getvolatility.com.
Thought it was an interesting chart. For those curious, I created it and did the back-test with the new options analytics package at www.getvolatility.com.
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