#putratiospread
#brokenwingbutterfly
#bearcallspreads
Sep 18 Sold 30/25 put ratio spread for 5.65 (5×10)
Bot BWB 15/10/7.5 for 1.25 qty 5
Trying to execute a ratio bear call spread at 60/65 for .70 qty 4
No upside risk, breakeven w/ the call spread is $10.00
#putratiospread
#brokenwingbutterfly
Jul 31
177.5/175 put ratio, 2×4 1.65 cr
172.5/167.5/165 BWB downside hedge .58 debit qty 2
breakeven $166.93, approx 12 delta
#shortputs #closing DKNG #putratiospread LUV #coveredcalls CCL
DKNG June 25 sold a July 17, 30 put for 1.23, bought today for .35
LUV sold Aug. 17, 30/30/32.50 put ratio spread for .26
#tastytradefollow
CCL bought 100 shares @ 16.88, sold July 17, 16.50 call for .88
#putratiospread #ironcondor #rolling KRE JPM OXY VIAC
KRE sold Aug. 21, 32/32/35 ratio put spread for .58
JPM sold Aug. 21, 80/85/110/115 iron condor for 2.06
#tastytradefollow
OXY rolled July 17, 30 put to August 17, 30 put for .20, I’ve had it since March 4, going to have it for a while longer.
VIAC rolled July 17, 25 put to August 21 for .87
#earnings UBER
Sold May 15, 28/30 #putratiospread for .32
#putratiospread AAL
Sold April 17, -20/-20/+22 ratio put spread for .83
#fallingknife #putratiospread VIAC #shortputs MRO
Working off of Iceman’s list, VIAC sold April 17, -24/-24/+25 ratio spread for .50
MRO sold March 6, 8.50 put for .18
#earnings #putratiospread SPCE
Sold March 20, -26/-26/+30 ratio spread for .88
#putratiospread #fallingknife JD
Tastytrade idea sold Oct. 19 back ratio, sold 2, 24 puts, bought 1, 25 put for .40 credit.
Now that @smasty160 (Sue) has informally introduced the “lophir” to Options Bistro, I’ll start sharing some of my trades. By way of a quick refresher, the lophir trade consists of selling 30DTE 30/15 delta put credit spread x2 and buying a 40/22 delta put debit spread x 1. All of these trades are net credit. You may notice me tweaking delta and DTE at times. My goal is to make some quiet money on a low maintenance trade.
STO +5 1/-2/-1/2 SSO Sep21 124.5/123/120.5/118 PUT/PUT/PUT/PUT @ .55 credit. GTC order to close at .17
STO +4 1/-2/-1/2 TQQQ 100 Sep28 68/65.5/63/60 PUT/PUT/PUT/PUT @ .60 credit. GTC order to close at .18
Buyer beware. These trades are in the experimental stage. Current plan is to cut the delta in half when price hits the profit peak on the risk graph and cut it in half again when it hits the breakeven price or close the trade if it’s near expiration. Our backtesting indicated that we wouldn’t need to manage often but live trading can make a liar out of backtests.:-)
Looks like it was a quiet day for a lot of people here.
1. May I please call these “Fuzzy” trades? I love them and I’m doing a lot of them (#SyntheticStock Diagonals w/ protection and hedge income—From now on known as #Fuzzies. To me, the Fuzzies have two stages, stage one is recovering the net debit of the trade; Stage 2 is recovery of the spread risk. I spent time this weekend looking at and scoring candidates. The “score” is basically the number of weeks of hedge income that it takes to accomplish Stage 1. The fewer the number of weeks, the lower the score. I’m looking for Fuzzies with a score of less than 5, less than 4 even better. I have a picture in my head of having a portfolio of 10 Fuzzies, each with $10 spread risk, bringing in 10-15K a week in income. So I’m testing these aggressively.
I have a TOS scan for finding high-return covered calls and puts, and it turns out it’s a good scan for finding Fuzzy candidates with low scores. Here’s the scan http://tos.mx/vKzR27
So back to Trade #1: CELG. I happened to catch a big bullish fund order for a Jan risk reversal, so a CELG #Fuzzy was my first trade of the day: Mar 110c/-110p/+100p, Dec 15 110 c. Net debit: 1.38 with a “Score” of approx 2.38 (2.38 weeks to cover the core debit)
2. Oh…here’s a nod to @hcgdavis for the Alpha Shark indicator. Got it. Love it. So scalped a bunch of /NQ today while taking it for a test run. Ended up +$305 on small-lot scalps. Enough to pay for the indicator 🙂
3. NTES. Now this was a franken-trade. It started as one 10-lot #butterfly. As it dropped added another 10-lot butterfly. Last week added a 3rd 10-lot butterfly. Was finally able to close it all out today for a $157 loss. Believe me, I’m happy with that!
4. #Bitties Closed! SPX x 20 lot, NDX x 10 lot. Got 50% target on all of them. The SPX bitties were 7DTE, so was happy to close them asap given the gamma risk. Net profit $1150.
5. Reset 17DTE SPX #Bitties. The Dec 27 2630/2625 for .85 cr x 20
6. NTNX I’ve been holding 703 shares, took 603 off for about $950 profit. Some day they’ll be acquired so I’ll always keep a hundred on. Great stock for swing trading, so will load back up on any dip. My max size position is 3000 shares, but I never seem to get the opp to add that many on.
7. QQQ #JadeLizard closed for 50% profit, this week’s expiration
8. SPY 266/267 #BuCS closed for 90% profit. This was bought based on #UOA (unusual option activity). SPY trades massive volume in fund flow, obviously—but it’s almost all put hedges. Every once in awhile a big bullish trade hits the tape, and those are ones for my attention.
9. NUE Closed a BuCS for 50% profit, this is another one that was bought on #UOA
10. NUE Opened a #Fuzzy Apr 60/60/50 for 1.87 core debit, Dec 15 62 call short for .56, Score is 3.3. There was a lot of bullish option flow on this today….all the way up to the 70 call line.
11 NUE spec trade based on #UOA bought 100 Jan 70 calls for .16, just looking for .21 as my target
12 MU #EarningsRunUp added two more calls to the trade from last week. Looking for 30% profit on these and must close before earnings announcement.
13 AMC #UOA There was unusual activity on AMC right before the other cinema merger happened last week. Turns out AMC confirms they’ve been approached too, regarding investment options. I’m glad I sold a few puts when I saw the fund flow. Netted 50%, $370.00 on a 10-lot
14. MSFT I like to layer on a lot of different MSFT trades. I love what they’re doing with Azure. However I saw a lot of January put buying today on MSFT, so I cut a trade short (#BuCS) for 28% profit vs. the 50% I was looking for. I still have on a MSFT #Butterfly that I’m watching closely. 80/85/90 for Feb.
15. ALGN This is the last of my trades from the tech crash. I defended it resulting in half what the max loss would have been. All closed now for $1150 loss. Classic case of thinking it would come back. Could have been handled better, but could have been handled much worse. I wouldn’t mind resetting with a #bitty or #PutRatioSpread the problem is that it’s just really thin. The Market Makers are not the worst I’ve dealt with (ISRG, KORS, ULTA are worse) but it’s still a struggle.
16. TWTR Opened a #Fuzzy in a 401K. I again saw some large bullish fund flow on TWTR and it had a good score. Mar 22/22/18 core for .78, sold Dec 22.5 call for .46, score is roughly 2. Not sure how this one will work out, but I’m still developing the perfect candidate profile for the Fuzzies.
@fuzzballl I hope you are ok being the namesake on these trades. It’s cute!
1. NVDA: Fully closed the #JadeLizard sold for 3.62, partial cover at 1.62 yesterday, rest covered today at 1.35
2. BA: Closed the contrarian BePS, closed for .66 shy of full loss. Prob of touch is still high enough I should have held, but it’s just continuing to be a train.
3. LRCX: Closed the #PutRatioSpread for over 50% gain, 1.45, $1555.00. Recovery mission on big loss last week.
4. MSFT: #Bitty closed for 50%, this was Jan 80/75 BuPS for .82 cr, covered .41
5. SPX : I’m kind of thinking we see a strong market into next week’s expiration, so rolled the short puts on the #RocketManHedge from 2605 to 2625. Realized $2820 in the roll.
6. SPY: Opened #SpikedLizard for January. Part 1: 264/265/267 for 3.74 cr Part 2 (spike) 260/253 ratio put spread for .05. No upside risk, downside BE is 253 due to the spike. Need SPY price above $260 for meaningful profit. 50% target. I’d like to ladder these every 2 weeks.
7. SPX: Opened 7DTE #Bitty I said I didn’t want to do 7DTE Bitties any more, but betting we see an upside into next week’s expiration. Of course I could be all wrong. Got more credit than usual on these. Dec 15 2630/2625 BuPS for average price of .875 credit, 50% target
8. TXN: Opened BuPS for January 97.5/95 for .72, 50% target
9. TJX: Continued defense. Sold Dec 15 calls to adjust deltas
10. MU: Opened #EarningsRunUp trade based on historical backtesting. Partial position. Dec 22 47.5 call for 1.04.
11. PIR: Closed #EarningsRunUp trade for 28% profit, bought at .35, sold at .45
12. ABBV: Opened #BuPS for January 92.5/90 for .56, target 50%
13. FLIR: Opened #SyntheticCoveredCall for January 47 puts for 1.40, very high historical win rate on short puts for this company
14. BBY: Closed the contrarian BePS for loss, salvaging .60 from max loss
15. AAPL: I already have a BuPS on for next week, used this little upswing today to sell calls converting it to an #IronButterfly.
Been a busy few days with market shenanigans for me. I was feeling a little overwhelmed keeping up with all the really great posts here, plus being an active participant at Simpler. Something needed cut…so I decided to take a little sabbatical from Simpler so I can have a tighter focus on things. Trading is not a hobby for me, it’s big responsibility, and I was getting a little too sidetracked with chat room stuff. I track unusual options activity (fund flow) via Trade Alert, and that was getting neglected too. Just putting focus back on that a little more today has already paid off.
Re trades, I usually have over 20 a day, so that’s too much to recap here, I need to find a way to give broader brush strokes with rare episodes of brilliance huh?
Good trades: The RH earnings run up was great, tested out with a very high win rate and the win rate continues (snagged 40% on long calls). Tomorrow is a PIR earnings run up trade with high historical success. The FAS #SyntheticStock diagonal was closed out for over $1400 profit.
Losers: I finally scratched off LRCX for a reset, saw a $14K loss on it, even after many adjustments. It’s my tax loss sale 🙂 I reset LRCX with a #PutRatioSpread, one of my fav setups on a stock that’s been hit hard. I have a new break even of $165. Losses on NDX/SPX #Bitties, but saved thousands in defense.
Active Trades: Got a lot of defense going on an LMT failed squeeze play. Lots of adjustments and layers added to extend range. It will be really satisfying if I can pull some green out! I’m pretty sure I can.
JPM: Opened a @fuzzballl trade on it this morning. Mar 105/105 #Synthetic with Mar 95 protective puts and a Dec 108 short call for very nice premium. The first round of short term premium covers the protective put cost. Other than that doing some #ReversionToTheMean trades on some parabolic stocks that seem to be working out well, quick profits on BePS on little retracements.
Hope everyone is doing great will catch up on posts tonight. Thanks always for the great ideas.
Sue
ADSK Fill
Got a fill on ADSK. This is a 2 part trade. Screen shot is below if you want to load it in to the analyze tab (see caution below)
Part 1: #PutRatioSpread Bought to open 5x Dec 1 121 put, Sold to open 10x 120 put for net credit of .80
Part 2: #CallDiagonal Sold to open 138 call x 5 for 1.06, Bought to open Dec 29 145 call for .91, net credit of .15
A lot of people don’t realize that with #TimeSpreads (like diagonals and calendars) it’s impossible to know what the max profit will be. You cannot trust your blue P/L line in TOS…that line will move up and down based on volatility, and with the long call out in the future–the best you can do is to model an x% vol crush in TOS (15-25% usually) to make sure your trade isn’t killed by lower vol. In the morning, that blue line will have contracted, so what can look like a great trade the day before earnings, can get very deflated upon market open, and many people don’t understand why it’s tricky to work time spreads around a known vol crush. But I’ve found credit diagonals, particularly, to be wonderful add-ons for earnings for increasing range, max profit, and balancing deltas.
The Put Ratio Spread is one of my all time favorite trades. It is a net long-delta trade that can provide a wonderful profit range. Really, the put ratio spread is identical to a Jade Lizard. If you put the two graphs side by side, they are the same. In fact the Jade Lizard creators at Tasty Trade have started doing JL’s using all one side of the option chain; puts for regular, calls for reversed. Put ratio spreads, since they are sold for a net credit, have no upside risk.
The Call Diagonal is a nod to all the bearish fund flow I’ve been watching on ADSK. There are a lot of Dec 120 puts being bought by funds, and the Dec 130 and 140 calls are being sold. So I designed the call diagonal spread around that 140 line.
There is risk on both sides of this trade. TOS is showing break even at 117.88/145.64. In reality that upper break even number will come in quite a bit in the morning. I prefer to consider the risk of a naked put as “long stock assignment”–I never consider it to be undefined risk. The upside of this trade is defined risk, but it’s wide, there will be pain if ADSK jumps over 140.00. Once again, pre-market defense (on a run up) will be buying some shares in after hours.
Options Bistro 