SPX Credit Spread Trader

Quote from RichardRimes:

Hey Leon...interesting you bring that up. When I was in Chicago for the 3 day TOS deal end of May Tom Sosnoff brought up selling the VIX puts and said it was a great trade that they had been doing all year (selling the 12.5's) making consistent money. Of course this was before June's volatility made the premiums shrink. However he said historically with the low's at 9-11 it provided a great balance in the portfolio. If the VIX does drop then all the longs in your portfolio are doing very well. He really liked the trade.
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Tom Smirnoff said that? Heh, great minds think alike.:p

Aug 12.5 VIX put at 0.15. Not much juice there. Nov@0.45. hmmm...

For money management, how much would you alot to this? If sold 12.5 put, max downside would be 12.5-9=3.5 minus premie. So if you get 0.4 for Nov, 0.4/3.1= 12.9% return for 4 mo's. Using Wade Cook math, you get 38.7% per year. (He just adds 'em up, that 1.129**3-1 is just too complex)

Like printing money, baby!:D
 
Right now the VIX is on the high side and too volatile IMO but in the next couple of weeks IF (big IF) there is an upswing in the mkt and VIX drops to sub 14 I'd be looking then.
 
i have been told that if u wish to trade vix futs options u have to sell puts if u expect a dump in vols and sell calls if u expect a rise...pretty much the reverse of what u would be doin' normally.

can some1 who has REAL experience tradin' vix futs options clarify the matter for me, please?

tia
 
Well the VIX options is what we were referring to here and if you expect vols to increase you could, if you were only looking at a premium selling strategy, sell puts since they would decrease as VIX incresaed and sell calls for expected VIX decreases.
 
Quote from Bitstream:

i have been told that if u wish to trade vix futs options u have to sell puts if u expect a dump in vols and sell calls if u expect a rise...pretty much the reverse of what u would be doin' normally.

can some1 who has REAL experience tradin' vix futs options clarify the matter for me, please?

tia
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Due to its inverse relationship to the market, perhaps they were refering to selling vix calls if you expect a rise in the market and selling puts if you expect a selloff. Dont see why you would possibly want sell calls prior to a vix spike or puts prior to a vol dump.
 
To clarify things a bit:

VIX is an index.

There are index options on VIX:
http://cboe.com/Products/indexopts/vixoptions_spec.aspx

There are also VIX futures:
http://cfe.cboe.com/Products/Spec_VIX.aspx

And apparently options on the futures (of which I know nothing about):
<i>TICKER SYMBOLS:
CBOE Volatility Index - VIX
Increased-Value VIX - VBI*
VIX Futures - VX

*Note: Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA) will publish VBI data as VXB for OPRA subscribers. Check with your quote vendor.
</i>

Boy, what fun!

BTW what is up with the IV on these VIX options.
http://www.ivolatility.com/options.j?ticker=VIX:CBOE&R=1&period=12&chart=2&vct=
From 58% to 126% WTF?
 
Leon:

Tom Preston of ToS gave a chat on the VIX back in March of last year. Here are some pertinent quotes from that chat:

Tom Preston: The other issue is that there is an expectation that the VIX won’t fall below 10.

Tom Preston: The VIX fell below 10 only one time, last year in July.

Tom Preston: That means that there aren’t many people looking to buy the 10 puts. That’s why most the puts at the 10 strike have 0.00 bid. Actually, they all had a 0.00 bid most of today, but there was a .05 bid for the April 10 puts that came late in the day.

Tom Preston: In that sense, VIX options trade like an option on a physical commodity where there is a government price support.

Here's the link:

http://mediaserver.thinkorswim.com/transcripts/Mar_1_2006_New_VIX_Options.pdf


Quote from LeonPhelps:

Can someone help me out with this? I've searched and searched but can't find if/where this has been discussed before.

Concerning VIX put options: shouldn't there be a floor around 10 for VIX. E.g. for option modeling, if you sold VIX puts at 15, seems like you could safely assume the lowest VIX would go would be in the 9-10 range.

Unlike a stock that could go to zero. IF VIX goes to zero, that means we are all dead anyway.:)
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Murray,

Do you leg into your diagonals or do you enter them as a spread order?

If you're entering them as spread order, do you have as hard a time getting filled as dagnyt? It seems diagonal orders are harder to fill around the midpoint than credit spreads.

And which broker do you use or are you with V trader now?

Thanks in advance.
 
Quote from jldavid47:

Something for all of you afraid of a Black Swan event. :D
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Its funny but psychologically I'm more afraid of the "White Swan":eek: Broke my cherry on the ES this week. Decided I would use it as a hedge to the upside so on Friday when things looked bleak in a Margin account I bought the 1315 calls X20 for .70 and 2 ES futures for 1246.75 and held over the weekend. When the market popped today I sold the 1295calls for 3.40. What I guess I'll do is wait until we're oversold then put a stop loss on the ES so if we go down I'll still make some money on the hedge and if we keep going up then it will help offset any adjustment to the calls.
 
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