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switch from spy to e-mini?


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switch from spy to e-mini?

  #1 (permalink)
goshdarnit
New York, NY
 
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Hi, I've been trading SPY on TradeStation, but wondered if it makes sense to move over to e-mini. I'm a bit new to this--anything I have to keep in mind?

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  #3 (permalink)
 
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 tturner86 
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goshdarnit View Post
Hi, I've been trading SPY on TradeStation, but wondered if it makes sense to move over to e-mini. I'm a bit new to this--anything I have to keep in mind?

How big is your position on the SPY?

https://www.thestreet.com/story/12100840/1/e-mini-sp-500-futures-vs-the-spy.html

Also I think one emini is 500 SPY? (Correct me if I am wrong.)

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 josh 
Georgia, US
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Spy has a tighter spread...

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 teamtc247 
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goshdarnit View Post
Hi, I've been trading SPY on TradeStation, but wondered if it makes sense to move over to e-mini. I'm a bit new to this--anything I have to keep in mind?

How have you been doing trading the SPY?

Process oriented goals #1.
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  #6 (permalink)
goshdarnit
New York, NY
 
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100 shares, no leverage, I let it run a bit, then get out, doing ok, but right now I feel like I'm just experimenting

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 teamtc247 
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goshdarnit View Post
100 shares, no leverage, I let it run a bit, then get out, doing ok, but right now I feel like I'm just experimenting

It all depends on what you want to do. SPY and ES correlate just like the Q'S and NQ. NQ is 20 a point as where ES is 50.

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  #8 (permalink)
Captain Howdy
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SPY shares are for institutional investors. If you want to ride SPY moves buy puts and/or calls. You'll get way more bang for your buck.

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  #9 (permalink)
goshdarnit
New York, NY
 
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Guess I need to learn a few things: can I get more leverage from puts/calls on SPY vs. eMini?

Say I want to invest $10K, either long or short, can handle loss, but have the courage of my convictions and want to finally do some leverage. Thoughts?

Thanks very much.

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 josh 
Georgia, US
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goshdarnit View Post
Guess I need to learn a few things: can I get more leverage from puts/calls on SPY vs. eMini?

Say I want to invest $10K, either long or short, can handle loss, but have the courage of my convictions and want to finally do some leverage. Thoughts?

Thanks very much.

Let's compare what $10K will get you today using all three approaches.

Stock:

Assuming you are using standard RegT 2:1 overnight margin requirements, your $10K becomes $20K, and that's how much you control. Currently that's 112 shares of SPY.

Options

How much leverage you use depends on the moneyness of the option.

Let's look at the Feb Week2 (expiring Feb 14th 2014) options. With the nearest ITM SPY call (177), you can achieve a large leverage. With $10,000, you can buy 50, at roughly $1.97 each, controlling 5000 shares of SPY, roughly totaling around $900,000, or 90X leverage. However, the disadvantage is that the delta of these options is only about 0.55, as the time premium is a whopping $1.47. So if the stock doesn't move much, you are out a huge portion of your investment (roughly 75% of it, which was time premium). So by the stock doing nothing, you lose a lot. And if the stock goes up, it will only be matched 55 cents on the dollar, so you are really controlling more like $500,000, not $900,000.

Compare this with the 171 call. The price is $6.81 and the spread is large, but volume is sufficient to buy a few calls. With your $10K you could buy 14 calls, controlling 1400 shares of SPY, totaling about $250,000, or 25X leverage. So, while the leverage is much less, the risk is also substantially reduced. If the stock goes nowhere, you lose only $0.14 of time premium, or about 3% of your initial investment, as the intrinsic value of the option is so high.

Futures

The notional value of 1 emini contract: $1767 (current price) x $50 per dollar = $88,350. So, with your $10K, you can control about $176,700, or about 17X leverage, since the initial margin is $4,758 per contract.


Summary

So there you have it. The greatest leverage is with the ATM option, the next is with the deep ITM option, next the emini contract, and finally the outright stock. Probably the best bets to leverage your money are the deep ITM calls and the emini futures. This is not a recommendation in any way, just a presentation of the data. I did this rather quickly so hopefully I didn't make any errors in my calculations; if I did please let me know!

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Last Updated on March 22, 2014


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