trade ideas

My goal is to help people become better traders.  It is less a goal to teach which stocks to trade, and more a goal to teach identifying situations, and matching strategies to those situations.  If you know ahead a stock’s price is rocketing to the moon, it’s easy, just bet the farm.  However, if you’re not sure, you don’t know if a stock will soar, but you have sound fundamental information and technical analysis to help reasonably know the direction of price, you can learn to develop successful strategies.

I would like to think, I can give information worthwhile to read, worthwhile to learn, and more important, worthwhile to trade.

Most investors do not understand the difference between price and value.  Value is what a stock should be worth.  Price is the last trade of record.  The key to successful investing is finding undervalued and overvalued stocks whose price becomes more in line with their value.  This is also called reversion to the mean.

The daily opinion poll, known as the market, determines price.  Like the political climate in America today, the financial climate is often a confusing and changing environment.  Bill Clinton and Amazon.Com have a lot in common.  Contrary to long time expert opinions, both are scoring amazingly high in the public opinion polls.  Trying to call their early demise might be the biggest mistake of the end of the 20th century.

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My major problem is that I am a one man army.  Attacked on all flanks and seriously out gunned.  I had to develop a hand to hand combat method of investing… Trench Warfare.  I knew my weaknesses (market predictions) and my strengths (logic, mathematics, analysis, and experience).  I would pick my battles and my battlefields…Options.

I hate stocks.  Their valuations are one dimensional…PRICE.  Stocks don’t know time.  This is evidenced by one of the oldest forms of Technical Analysis: Point and Figure Charting.  Options on the other hand are multi-dimensional.

Option pricing is based on the values derived from the Nobel Prize winning Black-Scholes formula.  Options are derivatives.  That is they have no value in and of themselves, their values are derived from something else.

Sounds scary, doesn’t it?  Aren’t derivatives responsible for breaking a British Bank?  Actually it was a young rogue trader in Singapore misusing derivatives that broke the long time institution.  If he knew some of things I plan on teaching, history could have been different.

I intend to take a complicated mathematical equation and give you the basics to successfully trade with this information.

You will learn how options are valued.  The components are simple; Time, Price, Potential, Dividends, and Interest Rates.

Time:  The one true constant.  Stocks go up, stocks go down, stocks stay the same, TIME passes.  The value of time does not decay linearly.  For true math heads only… Time Value decays at its square root.

Price:  Not only the price of the stock, but the difference of the Strike price versus the Stock price.

Potential:  Known as Volatility, measured in Standard Deviations.

Dividends:  Applicable only to stocks that pay dividends.

Interest Rates:  Short term risk free rate of borrowing.

These Mathematical counterparts have Greek terms.  This adds to the difficulty experienced by seasoned Stock Brokers as well as neophyte investors.

Time Decay-Theta, Price movement-Delta and Gamma, Potential-Vega, Interest Rates-Rho.

Strategies include almost every kind of spread imaginable, and some only a veteran such as myself could dream up.  They will include:

Bull Spreads, Bear Spreads, Put Spreads, Call Spreads, Credit Spreads, Debit Spreads, Calendar Spreads, Ratio Spreads, Back Spreads, Butterfly Spreads, Condor Spreads, Anticipation Spreads, Subsidy Spreads, Straddles, Strangles Combinations, Time Diagonals, Synthetic positions and Position Trading.

If risk can be minimized or hedged away, there is a spread that can do it.

Sounds Great?  Well it’s meaningless if you can’t trade it.

The public opinion poll on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) recently shown a less that happy result.  The price gapped down.  Not unlike many other stocks have done.

If you look at a long term chart of AMD you will see exactly why you don’t want to be a “long term buy and holder”.  This is a high tech company and the price hasn’t moved much?  Actually it has moved nicely, up and down!  Is now the proverbial Low from “Buy Low-Sell High”?  I don’t know.  But I can trade on the possibility.

AMD is almost a commodity.  They manufacture CPU’s to compete with Intel (INTC).  With consumers wanting less and less expensive computers, one would think things would be well for AMD.  However, Intel wants not only a bigger market, but bigger market share.  They have come out with cheaper chips to compete with AMD.  Chips that allow box manufactures the low entry price with the familiar Intel Inside logo.

We’ll enter a Position Trade, buying a long term call and selling short term calls against it.  We’ll look at a number of hedged positions where we buy and sell risk, buy and sell time decay and buy and sell potential.  It will cost us a certain amount of money to enter this trade and then a certain amount of money to maintain this trade.  The key to Position Trading is to have less money in the trade as time goes on and more profit potential.  It is money management.

Some stocks went up.  (Hopefully yours.)  Some stocks traded lower.  Some stock prices stayed the same.  (A few flat lined dead on arrival, many roller coasted up and down back to the starting point.)

I was just recently in Las Vegas, for business of course.  I enjoy going by the gaming tables.  Market research, crowd psychology.  Seeing how people bet their cash.  Well chips anyway, if bettors had to use real money, they might recognize how much money they just lost.

Ever watch people learning to play craps?  They’ll use real money.  Haven’t they heard of paper trading?  Maybe because the pit boss and the other casino employees are always willing to help.  Lots of assistance available to make a bet.  No matter what color the chips.

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Gambling and specifically craps have much in common with options: complex risk reward curves.  Since the IRS doesn’t allow deducting crap table loses from your income taxes, why would anyone want to throw dice.  They can bet options, I mean trade options.

Many amateur options traders invest as if they were at a casino.  No regards for the odds, just mesmerized by the big potential payoff.

Anyone who has been around Wall Street any length of time knows there isn’t many “sure things.”  Truly, time’s passing is the only safe bet.

In this example we will trade based on Theta alone.  We will consider the other “Greeks” asleep.  In reality, they are NOT dormant.  The fact is, you could set your trades up to minimize their effects.  Remember it’s best not to awaken a sleeping giant if at all possible.

Our hypothetical example will be four At the Money (ATM) options on a single stock:

One month option = $ 1.00
Two month option = $ 1.41
Three month option = $ 1.73
Four month option = $ 2.00

With these hypothetical examples, let’s enter a simple time or calendar spread.  We will buy the four month option for $ 2.00 while simultaneously selling the one month option for $ 1.00.  Our net cost would be $ 1.00 ($ 2.00 less $ 1.00).  Again for demonstration purposes we will not take commissions nor the bid/ask spread into consideration. And also ignore strike prices as well.

If everything remained the same except for time’s passage, after one month the option we sold (short position) would be worthless to the buyer.  An At the Money (ATM) option has no value at expiration.  A $ 1.00 profit to us, offset by the $ .27 loss on our four month turned three month option, brings our position value to $ 1.73.

Anyone who can find situations where all the variables remain constant for one month deserves to make 73% on their money.

In our perfect example situation, we could now sell another one month option for another Dollar. After the second month, the option we originally bought would have lost half its time, but only $ .59 of its value.  Now priced at $ 1.41, the income would be equal to its original cost, $ 2.00.  Our cost would be zero.  Our profits infinite.

Closer to expiration, owning options costs more.  Inversely, selling options closer to expiration can pay more.

If the one month ATM option is $ 1.00, and the four month equals $ 2.00, then the nine month option would be priced at $ 3.00.  Continuing forward, the 16 month option’s price would be $ 4.00 and $ 5.00 would buy the 25 month option.

If we could sell one month of time for $ 1.00, we could pay for the 16 month option in four months.  Giving us a year of potential for free.

Please don’t base trades on any one option pricing component, while ignoring the others.  You’ve been given enough information to be dangerous.  If you trade with blinders on, you tend to get blind sided.

Knowledgeable traders earn the right to have less money at risk and greater potential for profits.  Knowledge comes with experience, and experience comes with time, regardless of real chips or paper trades.

Time Passes

Beginning traders go broke taking big losses.  Novice traders fall victim to attrition through multiple small losses.  Advance traders falter taking small profits.  Where are you on the evolutionary chain of traders?

The ability to pick market direction reigns as the most important factor for success for all option traders.  Understanding option pricing helps traders magnify gains, and avoid losses.

Many new option traders dig themselves such a deep hole they can’t climb out.  At least, can’t climb out fast enough.  Stock prices go up, they go down, they may end up where they started, but time always passes.  Sometimes, there just isn’t enough time.

Have you heard the joke, “Convicts are the number one buyers of options, nothing makes time fly like owning an option.”  If you break a Law of option pricing, you don’t go to the jail house, you go to the poor house!

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What does all this mean?

An option’s rate of erosion shouldn’t surprise or scare anyone.  Option buyers can calculate time’s expense before buying.  This is done with the Greek called Theta.  Option sellers can predetermine maximum returns.  Traders can know the cost of carrying option positions, both long and short.  Hedged position traders can profit from the continual and constant passage of time.

Time’s Effect on Option Pricing:

Time value and time decay ranks as one of the easiest components of option pricing to understand.  The time value of an option includes everything but the intrinsic value.  Time costs money!  More time, more money.  Less time, less money.  It’s that simple.

But options can’t be simple, they have to have some complexity.  Time passes rhythmically with the tick of a clock, but time value erodes at a different tempo.  Time value decays at its square root.

The square of a number is the product of a number multiplied by itself.  1 x 1 = 1, 2 x 2 = 4, 3 x 3 = 9, etc.  The square root is the other side of the equation.  It’s the equal divisor.  The square root of 1 is 1, the square root of 4 is 2, the square root of 9 is 3, etc.

The Laws of option pricing dictate time value is highest for the At the Money (ATM) option.  Not sometime or most of the time but always.  Time value drops as the strike prices move In and/or Out of the Money (ITM, OTM).  Strike prices Deep In and/or Out of the Money (DITM, DOTM) have the lowest time value.  Not sometime or most of the time but always.

To better understand time value and its rate of decay, one should think in price units and time units.  Price units include dollars and cents; In the case of options, dollars and fractions of dollars.  Time units can be days, weeks or months.  You can even use hours, minutes or seconds.  We won’t discuss an option’s blink of an eye decay rate, but we could mathematically figure it out.

A Hypothetical Example of At the Money (ATM) Call options, (All other option pricing components being constant):

One Time Period = The Square Root of One Price Unit
Two Time Periods = The Square Root of Two Price Units
Three Time Periods = The Square Root of Three Price Units
Four Time Periods = The Square Root of Four Price Units

Insert the time period of your choice, months, weeks, days.  Insert the price unit of your choice dollars or fractions of dollars.  For our example, lets make it months and dollars.

1 Month = $ 1.00 (Square Root of 1 = 1)
2 Months = $ 1.41 (Square Root of 2 = 1.41)
3 Months = $ 1.73 (Square Root of 3 = 1.73)
4 Months = $ 2.00 (Square Root of 4 = 2)

We could extrapolate, the nine month option would cost only $ 3.00 (Square Root of 9 = 3), the 16 month option’s price would be $ 4.00 (Square Root of 16 = 4).

We could replace months with weeks and dollars with fractions, such as 1/2.  Therefore if the one week option were priced at $ .50, the four week option should be $ 1.00, the 16 week option would be $ 2.00.

If we assume four weeks per month, the consistency of the pricing of time becomes evident.  We can see the one month option and the four week option are both priced at $ 1.00.  $ 2.00 buys the four month option and/or the16 week option.  Continuing the math, the 16 month/64 week (LEAP) option would be priced at $ 4.00.

Both equations provide an equal answer:

16 Time Periods = The Square Root of 16 Price Units.
16 Months = The Square Root of 16 Dollars.
16 Months = 4 Dollars.
64 Time Periods = The Square Root of 64 Price Units.
64 Weeks = The Square Root of 64 ½ Dollars.
64 weeks = 8 x .50. = 4 Dollars.

Stock prices go up, they go down, they may end up where they started, but time always passes.  The passage of time can be a profitable journey.

Lets begin this post with a discussion about hardware.  I will get to trading strategies and trade ideas in a little while.  You need some hardware before you can run some software (which I will also discuss) in order to analyze what the markets are doing.

Any system that will run the current Windows 7 has enough horsepower to run all the current trading platforms.  My recommendation is to get as much memory as you can afford or can fit into your computer.  And then to get the 64 bit version of Windows 7 –  this will give you a machine that will be a little ahead of the curve and last longer then a machine with a 32 bit operating system.  Next to consider is your choice of monitors.  Do you go with a single large monitor or two smaller ones?  Both will work fine – it will depend on your budget and space on your desk.  I prefer 2 larger monitors – I use 2 – 24 inch currently.  A single 30 inch would work very nice as well.    My monitors are a bit older and not in the new widescreen format.  Widescreen means that the width to height of the monitor is in the relationship of 16:9 which is great for watching movies on your computer.  But I do not like them for looking at charts or working on my computer.  The problem is they are very hard to find and I have been told that the major manufacturers no longer make them.  Just the widescreen models 🙁

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Now for software – I have tested Think or Swim, Tradestation, eSignal platforms and find them all to be great.   So the important thing to see is what you are comfortable using.  And also the costs involved.  Some platforms will be free (except for exchange costs) like Tradestation, and some you will need to add a data service on top of the platform.  A lot will depend on your brokerage and the platform they use and the costs involved.  I like Think or Swim and love Tradestation which is my platform of choice.  Look around and try what is out there and find a platform that works best for you.

 

Welcome to My Blog!

Well I admit that I am new to this, so bear with me while I figure things out and put up something that all of you will find interesting to read.

A little about me first – why not it IS my Blog….  I have been trading actively for about 35 years.  Everything from T-Bonds, T-Bills, stocks, options, futures – pretty much everything possible except for Forex.  I simply feel that the futures are a better deal to trade then Forex.  If you think differently – be my guest and leave a comment below.

Have you signed up for my free report? Use the form on the right.

Currently I am focused on trading Weekly Options as you might have guessed by the name of this Blog.  Weekly Options are set by the CBOE – Chicago Board Options Exchange, and right now they are a work in progress.  This means that new ones are still being added and also others are being removed.  To check the current list of weekly options please visit:  http://www.cboe.com/TradTool/Symbols/SymbolWeeklys.aspx.

This blog will not be a primer on option trading – but we will define the terms that we will use – for example option greeks, and how to use them in trading option strategies.

This blog will discuss current market conditions, weekly options, use of weekly options for trading, trading strategies for weekly options, my trading and anything else that I and you the reader might find interesting.

Leave a comment below if you have a topic that interests you.