Writing puts on indexes

A

amooseman

According to the CBOE, a simple put writing strategy that sold ATM puts on the S&P 500 each month and held to expiration outperformed a buy and hold S&P 500 strategy with less volatility. 1986-2016 annualized returns were 9.9% for the PutWrite index and 9.5% for the S&P 500, annualized volatilities were 10.2% and 15.3% respectively.
http://www.cboe.com/micro/put/putwrite-fact-sheet.pdf


What improvements could be made to this strategy? Would any of these moves be worthwhile?

a) Change duration- weekly options would have more gamma risk but also earn more gross premium
b) Move the strike - earn a higher premium by selling in the money options and take on more delta
c) Managing winners - rolling up the strike once a target profit level has been achieved
d) Manage early - roll the option out after a certain number of days to decrease gamma risk

Additionally, if you were to adopt such a strategy, what methods would you consider to hedge your risk?
 
Well, it's worth noting that you're improving gains over buy and hold only by a fraction and there's a lot of work in managing the position. Also, the model assumes the cash used to secure the position (and premium received) is receiving the risk free rate. So you need to factor those transaction costs into it.

As far as hedging, you're basically writing the cheapest hedge there is, so it's really difficult to hedge effectively.

As far as moving the contracts around (strikes / duration / etc), if you move the strikes, you're just giving up premium--taking intrinsic value doesn't improve expectancy, but moving away from the money will harm your results. The place you might find edge is in holding options of given terms for the largest decline (i.e. from 45 DTE until 15 vs. 60 to 30).

But it all comes down to, anyone who could improve on that, already has, and the SPX / SPY is a really crowded place...I think you'd have better luck with single names.
 
amooseman said:
According to the CBOE, a simple put writing strategy that sold ATM puts on the S&P 500 each month and held to expiration outperformed a buy and hold S&P 500 strategy with less volatility.
More...

"Simple put writing" is a non sequitur.
 
My advise :
Treat all news & reports as nonsense and garbage.
Put in lots of efforts, do your own analysis and develop your own holy grail.

Earning money by trading stocks & derivatives is not that straight forward.
 
would rather sell calls and roll - or protect with long position. if you sell puts see if they still have flex options we use to sell on friday puts that expired on monday and did well.
 
MarkBrown said:
would rather sell calls and roll - or protect with long position. if you sell puts see if they still have flex options we use to sell on friday puts that expired on monday and did well.
More...

It's 2018. There are MWF expirations on SPX. Flex options, lol. As if.
 
Also not sure if these take into account dividends recieved.

Second would be selling puts would incur short term capital gain tax.

If you held the index and reinvest dividend. You would find it far easier. Lazier.


If I did. I would just sell calls. I speak from experience on ES.. not SPY. There is 12% out of the money calls a month to expire. To me. It’s just stupid. If you get a big rush up for three days. Count it to about 13.5%.. maybe even strangle then also.


It just isn’t worth the trouble to me
 
IndyJonerJr said:
Also not sure if these take into account dividends recieved.

Second would be selling puts would incur short term capital gain tax.

If you held the index and reinvest dividend. You would find it far easier. Lazier.
More...


Yes it takes dividends into account, tax implications of both strategies are important to which one might be preferable. In my situation selling SPX puts is better tax wise, but the issues raised by Beerntrading still remain :

"Well, it's worth noting that you're improving gains over buy and hold only by a fraction and there's a lot of work in managing the position. Also, the model assumes the cash used to secure the position (and premium received) is receiving the risk free rate. So you need to factor those transaction costs into it."
 
amooseman said:
According to the CBOE, a simple put writing strategy that sold ATM puts on the S&P 500 each month and held to expiration outperformed a buy and hold S&P 500 strategy with less volatility. 1986-2016 annualized returns were 9.9% for the PutWrite index and 9.5% for the S&P 500, annualized volatilities were 10.2% and 15.3% respectively.
http://www.cboe.com/micro/put/putwrite-fact-sheet.pdf


What improvements could be made to this strategy? Would any of these moves be worthwhile?

a) Change duration- weekly options would have more gamma risk but also earn more gross premium
b) Move the strike - earn a higher premium by selling in the money options and take on more delta
c) Managing winners - rolling up the strike once a target profit level has been achieved
d) Manage early - roll the option out after a certain number of days to decrease gamma risk

Additionally, if you were to adopt such a strategy, what methods would you consider to hedge your risk?
More...

I believe all are important tools...

1. You can hedge this strategy by always selling “out-of-the-money” puts.
2. Never sell more options than your account can cover!
3. Trade only "trending up securities" higher lows & higher highs the trend line is very important.
 
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