Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I am working on a project to try to determine the best entry and exit prices to get the best ROI% for options that I don't ride to expiration. The data I need is the price each day, which I have been able to calculate, and the margin required. This is turning out to be elusive.
There is no way with the PC-SPAN program to calculate margin while only changing the date and keeping all other variables constant. So what I am left with estimating margin based on a few days where the future's price was about the same and then guesstimating the others.
Preliminary results for an Oct ES 1350 put (when futures are at 1685) is best monthly ROI% is on at 2.50 to 1.90 and out at 0.25. Starting at a higher price further out in time gave a slightly lower ROI. Starting at 1.00 or less gave worse results by 1-1.5%
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Coincidentally, I have been looking at a similar thing, but more in real time. The question I was attempting to answer is "does it makes sense to hang on for the last tick or 2, or is it better to exit before expiration?"
The way I set it up: For any trade date after I enter, I simply re-enter all the pertinent info, and see what the new ROI is. If the new ROI is significantly higher than the original ROI, I consider adding to position. If it is a lot less, I look at exiting early, especially if I need margin for other trades.
So far, most of the time, it is indeed better to hold until expiration. But not always. Nevertheless, it was a useful exercise, but not nearly as in-depth as Ron's study.
It looks like PC-SPAN hasn't been updated since 2000. It sounds like what you need is an API (Application Programming Interface) to SPAN so that you can automate the SPAN calculations according to your own needs. I just had a look at the PC-SPAN online documentation. From it's appearance, it looks like PC-SPAN was written in Visual Basic. It MIGHT be possible to extrapolate an API from the DLL's/COM objects (If indeed the PC-SPAN authors used that approach, but I can imagine where they might have written PC-SPAN as a monolithic program, in which case you'd be sort of out of luck)
Alternatives? Unfortunately, there is remarkably little info available on SPAN margin calculating on the net.
just thought i would ask for your thoughts on the effect of the possible winding back of QE in the US. is it likely to have an effect on commodity prices?
the context i ask in regards to the aussie dollar. i have been selling plenty of options on the dollar for the last 4 or so months. With China slowing down and interest rates only going down in Australia i would expect the dollar not to rise agains the USD. I was reading something and a comment was made where Steve Briese was expecting the aussie dollar to bounce against the USD. I use cotbase.com to look at cot data and went in to have a look at what it was saying about the AUD. It currently is sitting, or just come off some crazy extremes for the commercials and the small Specs.
My question is, what would the effects of winding back QE have on the USD?
KC option volume and OI has dropped a lot. OI is the lowest since Feb 2010. Volume the last few days has been 2k. Last year 8k.
CL option OI is less than last year by 16%. But futures OI is all time highs. CL option volume Friday was the lowest since March.
NG option OI is down 10% from last year.
Grain and Livestock options are down from last year mainly because it was up last year due to drought.
GC & SI options OI are way up. 40% & 25%. But there is poor ROI on them.
But ES put OI is up 66%! Volume is up about 200%!
At first I was surprised how the markets changed from year to year. Now I expect it. So you need to be able to adjust your trading year to year. You can't find something that works now and say I can just keep doing this for a while. That just doesn't work.
I have experienced that too. You just have to keep shopping around. It makes it harder to keep up with the fundamentals for a wider variety of markets.
Haven't posted in a while but the only trades I have been making are in CL and ES. Been selling weekly ES options around high up or down days (if there is one) because I'm thinking we'll be range bound for a while. My opinion is there is a downside bias in the indices with the 'tapering talk' happening and some of the earnings misses. The ROI is crap but if I can add a few hundred to the account week after week then I'm going to take it.
Been selling CL calls are around 130 or 140 level. Don't like the puts yet. Too long to hold the 75 or 70's. Too long for me that is.
