SPX Credit Spread Trader
- Thread starter El OchoCinco
- Start date
For those of you looking for a more active method. Don't passively-define the distro and sell stops. Pick long and short entries and sell synthetic straddles into that prediction. Trade... you're not buying bonds or munis here.
Choose an appropriate charting duration;1d, 60m, 30m, 15, 5m, etc... and trade the signals. I would look to the 1d and 15m for triggers.
A high confidence short should be met with atm short calls or a 1 sigma otm put strike short synthetic straddle[sell 30d puts into a long signal]:
SPX -- 1320
Sell 2 ES Oct 1300 puts
Sell 1 ES Dec F
Match the sigma to the duration so that you're reasonably confident that the market won't roll beyond your short strike and invert your deltas. Delta/smile gains should exceed any vega hit under 2 sigmas.
Buy wings or offset if you have some edge upon reaching the strike. If we rally you can off the short futures and buy an atm put for some vegas.
The above is only recommended if you're shorting gamma exclusively. If you want to buy some vegas, then trade long [inverted -- short under long(puts)] diagonals or long time spreads into a short signal.
Choose an appropriate charting duration;1d, 60m, 30m, 15, 5m, etc... and trade the signals. I would look to the 1d and 15m for triggers.
A high confidence short should be met with atm short calls or a 1 sigma otm put strike short synthetic straddle[sell 30d puts into a long signal]:
SPX -- 1320
Sell 2 ES Oct 1300 puts
Sell 1 ES Dec F
Match the sigma to the duration so that you're reasonably confident that the market won't roll beyond your short strike and invert your deltas. Delta/smile gains should exceed any vega hit under 2 sigmas.
Buy wings or offset if you have some edge upon reaching the strike. If we rally you can off the short futures and buy an atm put for some vegas.
The above is only recommended if you're shorting gamma exclusively. If you want to buy some vegas, then trade long [inverted -- short under long(puts)] diagonals or long time spreads into a short signal.
Don't want to appear defensive, as I appreciate your comments, but the vertical is 15 wide and there's also the embedded calendar on the put diagonal.
I get your point, I think, that theta is so small compared to vega and delta near term (1:6) that the position ends up basically being short the market and would probably be better played a different way?
Ahh, missed the 15-wide. Even worse in terms of notional risk, but at least you'll earn a few more pennies in theta. Nothing wrong with the position IF we trade materially-lower. No, I wouldn't recommend a 15-wide short gamma penny-vertical under any circumstances. The bounded-risk and probability entices traders into accepting the overwhelming risk-reward.
Come on, you have to give me a little more credit than that. It was placed for $5.50, a 3:1 risk/reward at expiration. I should be able to keep it at 1:1 by cutting my losses early or hedging. And I don't place them based on probability of profit, but on expected returns over a box bounded by price and date ranges. Sure, I do look at the probability of profit at any point in time within that box by intersecting the bell curve with the price range, but it doesn't mean anything by itself.
Well i am no mo but perhaps it would help if you think of the position as a short straddle. The synthetic compotent allows for better fills and more control over your offset/adjustment.
Previous posts referred to theta decay while being short gamma in a vertical. The suggested position is a pure short gamma play within 1 sigma or two in whatever time interval you follow. The position benefits from theta much much better than a vertical. If market moves towards your short OTM strikes, you will have some delta gains as you have a short bias and vega gains as you originally sold skewed strikes. Throw in some theta decay and you get what risk referred to as an edge to offset or buy the wings. You would want to do that as your deltas are going to invert, shorts puts will carry higher total deltas against your futures. Position requires watching it/trading it actively as you will want to offset leg(s)s on the rallies/pullbacks to stay close to neutrality within your bias.
I am sure mo will add more to it.
Oh christ, not that dreaded pitchfork again! I thought we killed that thing.
