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I am pretty familiar with what constitutes good fundamentals for a publicly-listed company. When you say you are primarily concerned with the fundamentals of a commodity, what exactly are you looking at? And is there a particular place (book, magazine, website, analyst blog) that you get your info to study? Do you look at the info and form your own directional opinions. or do you subscribe to a commodity analyst service?
As the year draws to an end and my first year of option trading too, (I sold my first ever in feb 2012), I thought it might be of interest to review my progress so far.
I sold mainly CL, but also NG , KC, ZS, ZC, GC, ES, TF & EUR futures options within my Interactive Brokers UK Pension Account. I also bought some CL calls which helped to boost my returns.
As these are all $ demominated trades, I first had to convert my Pounds Sterling into Dollars using IB's IdealPro and then to prevent any currency risk I hedged by buying enough GBP (6B) futures to cover the amount I converted.
The end result of 10 months tentative trading with very little done over the last two months has been a total account gain of 23.2%. I am very pleased with this (Buffet level) performance and realize I can do even better next year.
I would like to thank Ron for all his help in answering everyones questions and I wish everyone All The Best for Christmas and the New Year.
Yes, that can be a problem on the less liquid issues. I think that's why I prefer CL, so long as price isn't screaming, there is usually a quick fill at mid-price. The less liquid need to be deep OTM and left till expiry, so no spread then.
I couple of months ago you mentioned that you were getting emails and the newsletter from James Cordier. What's your opinion of the value of his advice? Is he reasonably accurate?
I still get them but they are a bit erratic, not received anything for a while now. I would say his opinions and market reading generally seem sensible and logical. He often shows seasonality charts from MRCI to back up his arguments.
It is difficult to get much information on selling futures options so I take whatI can find. If you sign up for the newsletter you can download the old ones as well and check his calls historically.
I also would like to share my results for this year. I started trading, with a very modest account, in April this year. In my first 2 months I had lost 40% of my investment. Then, things started to change and in the last 6 months, I came up with a total of 60% gain for the whole year.
I believe I got lucky the second half of the year. I mainly sold corn (I lost a lot with the drought, then gain back some), soybeans, natural gas and coffee.
Merry Christmas everybody and thanks for your valuable input in this forum.
I am glad that I found this thread. I too have been selling options on commodities but I have yet to have the success that ron99 has achieved. My lack of success is due directly to not having enough discipline and patience to follow a simple trading plan. During the past several months I have done some intense self-evaluation and I have identified why I keep sabotaging myself and I am ready to fix my discipline issues so I can have a profitable 2013.
I too have read Cordier's options selling book and followed their recommendation to look for strikes with a lower than 0.20 delta but it seems that that is still too close. I have no problem going even farther out and looking for strikes with deltas below 0.04 but here is another question, what is your stop loss ron99 because let's say you sold the April CL 120 call for 0.13 premium ($130) with a delta of 0.0268, where is your stop loss? Cause if you follow Cordier and exit when the premium doubles to 0.26, wouldn't you be exiting a lot? How much heat are you willing to take? Do you use a percentage? Or do you base your stop loss on market conditions and how many days are left until expiration?
I currently using IB and I find that the margin requirements at very very high compared to other places, this is bad for my ROI.
I took a quick look at OX and saw their commission rates for options on futures is $12.99 for 1-40 contracts/month. Is that a flat fee or does that mean for every option I sell it is $12.99 each? Cause if it is $12.99 each that is very very very high. To sell one April CL 120 call at IB the commission would be $2.32 one way if I allow it to expire worthless. It would cost me another $2.32 to cover should I need to. That is $4.64 round-turn at IB. So the same trade at OX would cost me $25.98? Or am I wrong?
Speaking of James Cordier, I got a newsletter from him last week talking about selling OTM puts on silver.
