Quote from optioncoach:
Vols are more relevant for ratio spreads than credit spreads definitely. Although vols do not have to be high to take nice credits for ratio spreads, it sure helps. With vols low, the market moving lower and vols increasing will push the short puts higher and since you have twice as many as the long puts, it is an issue to consider.
Thanks for the tip coach. My IB account is ready to go and I can't wait to look at the quotes on ES when the market reopens on the 5th. Though I think I'll just start small and with buying 2 Puts and selling 4 calls or maybe bigger multiples.
The thing i noticed is that the distance between yours and also Rally's short and long puts is only 25 points which leaves little room for the lottery to happen, cause the lottery would be real nice if it did fall in betweent the strikes. It can happen but I would like to make that gap bigger and give it more of a chance.....perhaps 40pts to increase the chance of ES falling in between? But the trade off could be it won't be a credit ratio spread and I might have to sell more puts to get credit but then the ratio of sold puts to purchased puts could be 3:1 or more which may make the profile too dangerous.
Another thing I could try, to go along with the smaller multiples is to move the ratio spread closer to the money... which again would increase the chance of ES falling between the strikes. I could be wrong but there seems to be a lot of choice to play around with strike distances, ratios and adjustments if things go against you. Anyway I'll stop rambliing and better do some research.
PS. Coach or anyone else could you please clarify something for me in regards to IB ,
In IB, there are a few selections to choose from when I type in ES in the UNDERLYING column. These selections come up...Stock, Index, Futures, FuturesOptions, Futures Spread, Options, Bond. Do I just select Index for the underlying, and for the the options I plan to trade, do I also select FuturesOptions. They are both Globex products with (USD) in brackets so Im guessing those are the ES products I;ll be trading?
Thanks
