Alright, I’m still at the conceptual stages with this subject--hoping to get some pragmatic input from smallish retail guys who are well-practiced with hedging away deltas to keep a vega position relatively clean. Maybe @TheBigShort can weigh in? You seem to be one of the most recent serious learners to come through the board.
Calendars and diagonals can accomplish this pretty nicely.. but sometimes the vol term structure makes these unattractive to put on for what I’m trying to accomplish. So let’s say I start out selling a straddle because I want to be short vega.
I figure I can either:
Pros and cons to for these options? 3) seems the more straightforward, but what does this practically look like? Over the life of the position we can buy/sell more options on the same strike, resetting to 0 deltas and keeping vega exposure within a desired range. But on a sporadic path would this run the risk of getting too messy or ending up with a position that is too sensitive toward the end? Seems simpler just to put on/take off the underlying as needed, but the cost of this is that it ties up more capital?
Re-hedging at a certain frequency with underlying seems like the best option but I'm just cautious there's some caveat and it's not actually that simple.
Appreciate any thoughts other traders are willing to share to give me a little more insight/direction as I get further into testing this stuff. Still a relatively new area of study for me. Thanks.
Calendars and diagonals can accomplish this pretty nicely.. but sometimes the vol term structure makes these unattractive to put on for what I’m trying to accomplish. So let’s say I start out selling a straddle because I want to be short vega.
I figure I can either:
- Reduce size and just absorb the impact the eventual deltas have on my ending PnL. If there’s decent expected value on the vega thesis it should prove out over the long term, right? Since a hedge doesn’t necessarily have EV/alpha of its own, we just use it to make things a less noisy.
- Ratio the straddle to be short more calls than puts? Then in theory when the vega thesis itself is less favorable, at least there will be more premium from the calls that are now OTM offsetting rise in vol, and on the flip side my gains when vol does decrease healthily will offset having greater delta losses in the call side in these same scenarios assuming normal correlation between underlying and vol. Overall the account PnL would be less volatile to some degree?
- Find a reasonable frequency to hedge whenever I take on +/- X deltas, that will reduce delta effect on the position well enough without getting too commission or effort intensive.
Pros and cons to for these options? 3) seems the more straightforward, but what does this practically look like? Over the life of the position we can buy/sell more options on the same strike, resetting to 0 deltas and keeping vega exposure within a desired range. But on a sporadic path would this run the risk of getting too messy or ending up with a position that is too sensitive toward the end? Seems simpler just to put on/take off the underlying as needed, but the cost of this is that it ties up more capital?
Re-hedging at a certain frequency with underlying seems like the best option but I'm just cautious there's some caveat and it's not actually that simple.
Appreciate any thoughts other traders are willing to share to give me a little more insight/direction as I get further into testing this stuff. Still a relatively new area of study for me. Thanks.
