Lottery Ticket Style Investing/Trading

[Fundlord]

Just finished reading The Black Swan and one very interesting concept stood out to me.

You should build a strategy around very safe investments 80%+ and ultra high risk investments <20%. The idea of collecting lottery tickets the potential loss could be x but the payoff could be 20x 50x 100x or even 1000x.

They should be very asymmetrical is nature so levering up 500x on an fx trade is pretty much symmetrical depending on how big the move is before you get stopped out.

Examples of asymmetrical bets in relation to money:

Starting 10 businesses with $10k each, 9 fail, 1 gets acquired years later for $150m

Buying credit default swaps before the housing crash paying out 600+ times the bet in kyle bass's situation.

Buying a large amounts of puts before that 10% selloff witnessed in the sp500 this year.

Could someone explain to me the payoff ratio in the option market in case 3 ? Say buying puts with $10,000 to risk, prior to the open of the second day after the first 2% slide ?

 

[IAS_LLC]

It depends on the implied vol and how far out of the money the puts being purchased are.

For example, the AAPL is currently trading for about $107.30. You could buy a jan 8 105 Put option (thats about the 2% move you listed) for $57 a contract (IV of 21%). If by jan 8, the price is 104.. your $57 just became $100. If you wanted to gamble a little more, you could buy 100 put for about $15... if the price goes to $99, your $15 just became $100....Thats about 6.5:1 payoff...... If you think the probability of a price move like that is > 6.5:1 ..... pull the trigger.

 

[lawrence-lugar]

Just finished reading The Black Swan

Buying a large amounts of puts before that 10% selloff witnessed in the sp500 this year.
Could someone explain to me the payoff ratio

Buyer shorter time frame options, and do it again and again -- instead of buying far out options and waiting and waiting to see how it plays out.
/spin those revolutions faster./

 

[Fundlord]

Buyer shorter time frame options, and do it again and again -- instead of buying far out options and waiting and waiting to see how it plays out.
/spin those revolutions faster./

Do short term options provide the same type of payoffs ???

Does it just depend on how far out the strike price is that determines payout ?

 

[IAS_LLC]

Do short term options provide the same type of payoffs ???

Does it just depend on how far out the strike price is that determines payout ?

Yea they do. The main difference is you can buy short term options cheaper because the probability of the move is lower and and there is less time value baked into the options price. For OTM options, the price is purely based upon IV and Theta(time) . For far OTM options, you are basically just paying (donating) the market maker a few pennies to take the other side of your bet.

Personally, I think you are better off finding under(over) priced options that are only moderately outside of the money. This may not create as big of homerun, but could yield greater profits over the long term..... Blindly buying far OTM options has a negative expectancy

 

[Fundlord]

Yea they do. The main difference is you can buy short term options cheaper because the probability of the move is lower and and there is less time value baked into the options price. For OTM options, the price is purely based upon IV and Theta(time) . For far OTM options, you are basically just paying (donating) the market maker a few pennies to take the other side of your bet.

Personally, I think you are better off finding under(over) priced options that are only moderately outside of the money. This may not create as big of homerun, but could yield greater profits over the long term..... Blindly buying far OTM options has a negative expectancy

Thank you for your replies. I am really new to the options market I have only traded futures, cfds, stocks., but I want to up my R:R significantly.

How much of a financial commitment is need to start in options any recommended reading materials/brokers ?

 

[IAS_LLC]

Options Volatility & Pricing by Natenberg.

It depends how you want to trade them. If you are wanting to trade interday on margin, you'll need atleast $25k to meet PDT requirements.

Buying/selling naked options is a losing proposition for most I'd guess...the power of options is realized when they are spread.

Take my advice with a grain of salt...I'm no options expert...but I dabble

 

[Tracy Richads]

I do about 30-350% ultra high risk investments a month, so far the risk paid off.

 

[jonny1lot]

The equivalent to a lottery ticket in the options world is going long OTM puts or long volatility. Those two strategies by themselves are generally unprofitable strategies (caveat: buying calendars get you long vol and is a profitable strategy, but calendars are the option equivalent of pouring molasses). The problem is the death by 1000 cuts waiting for vol expansion / lottery ticket to pay off. However, if you can find a way to lower your cost basis while you are waiting for the lottery ticket to pay off, then you have the basis for a profitable trading strategy.

 

[Timetwister]

The problem is finding bets with positive expected value. If you want to randomly bet for unlikely scenarios, you can just buy literal lottery tickets.