Fellow Options Traders, Why Aren’t You Selling Options in Your Trading Account?

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:08:17 +0000

The only explanation which would seem acceptable is no one has shown you how to perform this marvel of printing money before, so you are a bit unsure of how to go about doing so!If this is your situation, then you are excused…But if not, you are truly missing out. Even if you are in the first situation, you are still missing out!No matter how long have you been an options trader, you will eventually find out that there is quite a bit of uncertainty involved with buying options.The Chicago Mercantile Exchange estimates over 80% of all options sold expire worthless. So why aren’t you selling them instead of buying them?An option is considered a “wasting asset.” Time value erodes as each day passes, accelerating as the option’s expiration nears. This is referred to as “time decay”.If the underlying contract does not move far enough by expiration, the option will have no value left and expire worthless and the option seller will keep the premium.When selling (or writing) an option, we get paid the premium up-front and we take advantage of “time decay”.However, it is simply not enough to know that to selling options generates significant premiums, you must also have a well throughout strategy for performing this. Along with this, you will also need to make corrections for when the market goes out of your favor.We have solved this by only selling straddles. You seasoned guys know what a straddle is. It is simply having a neutral outlook on the market, and trading it accordingly. By selling straddles, we are essentially playing both sides of the market. Stocks go up, down or stay the same. So we hedge our bets in both directions and hope that the stock remains flat.Our view stems from the fact that, a directional move will increase one side of the option play, and decrease the other side. So even if you may loose money in one position, we are gaining money in another. and by staying flat, both sides simply reduce to zero.Since we only sell out of the money positions, unless the stock breaks through the strike price, at expiration, best case scenario is we make money on both option legs. Worst case scenario is we loose on one leg, and we gain on the other, coming out with a wash.Or the more likely scenario, is both option legs are reduced to a level which we are happy to take profits.However, even though we believe selling options can potentially put the odds of success in your favor, it still requires good, solid market analysis. That’s how we, as seasoned traders arrive at our option picks!After trading options for many years with so much success, we see no reason to buy options. We have discovered, when options are sold correctly and carefully, they can generate a higher percentage return than any other option or stock trading strategy.Novice traders benefit the most from our alerts because they soon realize the difference is, selling options gives you a larger margin for error. You don’t have to be exact, only close.OPTIONXSPREADS is a group of ex-stockbrokers and investors who have developed this site to allow the ordinary investor to trade along with the pros, and have a chance to double, tripple and quadruple their investment dollar. And all you have to do is follow our trades and make money!Even if you do not follow our trades, realize that you should incorporate option selling into your trading strategy, to take advantage of the favorable odds! To see how we provide tremendous gains to our members every month, visit our website: www.optionxspreads.com

How to Read an Option Chain

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:43:30 +0000

Before we can begin to trade in options, we need to understand the basic terminology of these sophisticated financial instruments so that we can start to interpret the mass of figures which appear, when an option chain appears on the screen.

Each option has a so called strike price. This is the price at which the option contract has been written. Every option has a whole series of strike prices from which you choose the one you feel is the most appropriate. Most options are written on a monthly basis, so at any one time there will be a series of options spread over several months into the future. Every option is issued with a spread of strike prices from very low to very high. The increment of the strike will vary according to the underlying value of the share. For a low value stock, the increments might be in $1 amounts, but for a higher value stock these could be $5 or $10 steps. The series of options is called an option chain, and each chain will cover several months. Some series are written quarterly and others on a monthly basis.

The strike price is normally presented in the middle column, with calls to the left hand side and puts shown on the right hand side. The first column labeled ‘symbol’ shows the unique code for that particular option. These are unique to the contract, the period and the equity, and can be found on many sites. When trading they normally appear as part of the trade – it is not something you have to remember! The next column is the ‘last’ , which displays the most recent prices which have been bid.

The bid and ask prices are simply the buying and selling prices of the premiums, with the ‘vol’ column showing the number of trades for that particular day. The final column is normally one labelled OI, which is short for ‘Open Interest’. This shows the number of contracts bought or sold and currently waiting for the expiry date.

An option is said to be ‘in the money’ if the strike price is below the market price for a call, and above the market price for a put. For example with a call if the strike price for the option was 500p and the equity was trading in the market at 550p, then this would be 50p in the money. (Remember a call increases in value as the underlying asset increases in price). With a put, this would be in the money for the same strike price if the equity was trading at 450p. These are normally highlighted in the chain to show their status. An option is ‘at the money’ if the strike price and market price are the same.

‘Out of the money’, is simply the reverse of being in the money. For example with a call, if the strike price was 500p and the equity was trading in the market at 450p, then this would be 50p out of the money. An option has intrinsic value if it is in the money and an at the money, or out of the money option, therefore has no intrinsic value.

Each chain will show the underlying equities current market value, along with the associated ticker and the number of days left until expiry.

Strangle Options Strategy » Puts

Fellow Options Traders, Why Aren’t You Selling Options in Your Trading Account?

How to Read an Option Chain