Michael ( thinking out loud )
Playing with the numbers. Out of curiousity, to avoid 'rolling over' I looked at both the RUT and the OEX
You can get a 5 % deviation at least right now. Which would be Delta .14 In the OEX for December options. Though I suppose you would want to hold off until Friday expiration this week. I'm presuming that the RUT expires this Friday like the OEX?
If the RUT expires this Friday then you can get a 6% deviation, which would give you a Delta of .20 on your sold spread side.
I believe the 5% deviation is in the 90% probability range and the 6% would more likely be 98% probability.
From what I read of Brad's work, that would allow you to let the spread run until almost getting hit, if that should happen? Which from reading his stuff, is what he is doing. It would avoid rolling over losses. At least most of the time.
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Whoops! I stand corrected. I was thinking in terms of WEEKLY trading. The deviation has to be doubled for MONTHLY trading. So that won't work.
Let me see, another look at the OPTION CHAIN for RUT. That would at 12% deviation give you .30 cents for a premium. I believe he wrote something about premiums expected. Hmmnnn! So that is what he is doing? He is going to a 12% deviation.
Hmmmn! Interesting there is no premium at 12% deviation in the OEX. So trading the RUT would be the name of the game.
I think I'll have to go back to the monthly charts and see what kind of deviation you get on them with the monthly bar movement?