Quote from Maverick74:
Anytime you are short options you should always scalp them. If I have a spread on and I'm short a put for 3.00 and can buy it back for .40, why wouldn't I? I can resell that put for 2.00 and possibly leg into my backspread for a credit and possibly scalp the short put again. As your short options approach zero, the risk/reward inverts. Meaning you are risking more and more to make less and less. But by scalping it, you are actually reversing that and increasing your reward and reducing your risk. CTM backspreads are easy to scalp because they have enough deltas and gamma.
Backspreads are the most versatile option strategy. Because you can trade direction, trade delta neutral, sell juice, play for a big move, gamma scalp, all while having very limited risk.
A good trader will be able to leg into his backspreads for credits and trade direction for free while having unlimited upside and zero risk of taking large hits.
Quote from chiefraven:
cool. that's a very realistic and doable goal.
how do you trade the futures? you dont have to get into details, but i would like to get a rough idea on how you trade it. Mostly with TA and Charts? or what type of trading do you apply for the futures? News driven?
Quote from tyrant:
Hi Mav,
If you can successfully gamma scalp, isn't it better to do it with futures as they have less slippage? Can a trader expect to overcome the slippage/spread of options over the long term over many transactions, as can be expected in gamma scalping? To successfully gamma scalp, it means you think that you can profit by buying cheap CTM puts, for e.g., and sell them when they move up in price. If you can do that, why not do it in the futures?
Thanks for your input.
Hi MavQuote from Maverick74:
No, you are not gamma scalping actively. You are simply trying to sell juice and inflate your credit with as little risk as possible. You cannot do this trading futures. Futures create too many hard deltas. When you trade options for a living, you need to make a decision day one. Do you want to trade hard deltas, or soft deltas. These two beasts are not the same.
Quote from Maverick74:
The goal is to make 5% to 10% a month.