Quote from bwolinsky:
Hi, I'd like to point out that so many times when I'm reading this forum it's always about some schmuck who would like to do something fancy option wise so they'll put on a butterfly or say something with the favorite catch phrase of an iron condor but more often, it is usually an individual trader making too many bets than he has to to make the money he wants.
A strangle is stupid. Come up with ways to predict which way the market will move, then trade options that way. Quit these idiotic options combinations and make directional bets. That is what makes money, not this idiotic I'm guaranteed to make money if I buy both a call or a put or I should make some small profit off theta or vola is too low so I think there's a high probability of a 4% move but I don't know which way it'll go so I'll be a dumass and put a strangle on just so I'll be sure that I can report a profit on at least one of them but god help me if they're at the money on expiration.
Seriously, this is one of the sophisticated parts of trading, but the more stupid strategies I see people putting on just for the sake of supposedly managing risk doesn't make any sense. If you're betting both ways there's no point to even being in the position and unless you have some reason to put a share to somebody there's no reason to ever sell a put and without question don't ever sell a naked call.
You should either use options to hedge by buying small percentages of your portfolio in put options whenever whatever marginal winning system you have is when you should do it and just see it as paying 3% to protect yourself which is a much better investment some would say than taking it to somebody who would not buy such insurance.
Haven't done greeks but the only thing I care about to calculate my hedge ratios is delta, and I use that delta as a target dollar amount that I convert into the requisite percentage to figure out how many contracts to buy,. If you're not doing that maybe your broker doesn't allow you to trade options.
Here's all they're for, managers figure they'll make between 7-15% every year, and in the off chance that they have a bad year their standby is the zero return year because their positions went against them but they had a bunch of options contracts but practically all of the financial institutions won't do this, (probably except for Karen Feinerman on fast money she seems to enjoy buy russell puts more than 5% OTM).
So why do we have so many threads discussing possible options combinations to buy when all you need to do is bet the correct direction. Don't bet both, you won't make any money that way, and I'm sure there'll be some flak from saying that but even after studying options in the CFA curriculum there's not much place for the strategies designed to exploit theta decay because it can be convexly disadvantageous, especially if you're working in bonds or bond futures just watching the prices of bonds move for the first time I thought that they'd have a bit more push up but now that the yield curve is about to go inverted we'll be in for some more money printing so even from the perspective of inflation you'd only want to trade those anyway.
Why complicate these things? Trade directionally. Build systems designed to hedge or leveraged long/short by buying puts that'll protect 80% of your portfolio at least. They don't cost much and if you're timing's good but it doesn't have to be because it assumes a consistent periodicity and ti****ble for investment I think that a lot of the volatility many will experience in options will go away if they really try to target what they're trying to make and actually examine which way a stock or ETF might move.
The options on index futures strategy is safer in the sense that it's the whole market, but don't trade them unless you really have some conviction about where you think the market might move to.
Buying leaps is fine, but don't expect the moves to be even close to 1 for 1. If you're in the money after a year and a half, then that leap should probably be sold at the earliest possible time and wait for a pullback. That's the long, but I don't know hardly anybody trading put leaps.
