I have to tell a funny on myself as it relates to writing DOTM options. I occasionally see a dumb bid on an option I'm interested in and will oftentimes hit it. I've picked up some nice trades doing this. Sometimes the bid is above the previous settlement, even when the underlying is moving in a direction that should make the option cheaper than the previous settlement.

I was looking at HOX4 3.6 Calls and saw that the prev close (8/19) was $.05, but some idiot was bidding $.07. I thought, HEY!, I might want to add to my position if this guy is going to pay above settlement.

Fortunately, that thought sat on my brain for only about 5 seconds before I realized that the $.07 bid was MY BID!! I briefly forgot that I was trying to close out my trade and that the market was substantially below my bid!

Doh!

I didn't enter any trade, but I realize that that would have been a really dumb thing to do; do a trade with myself!

Ron,
Would you please check this chart against yours to see if they are close. Work in progress.

thinkorswim Sharing


Thank you,

Adrian

Thanks for these two threads, ron99, which I have in fact been loosely following since the outset. I did however miss your excellent & very professionally presented webinar from last December (just watched)... although I'd love you to make Part II !

About 10 years ago, I briefly traded an unusal strategy that sold YM option straddles on a monthly cycle, whilst trading the underlying into the strike areas such that any option loss was always fully covered. I stopped because of time constraints & I've often thought if there was just one strategy I should have stuck with, it was that one.

So I'm going to dip my toe in the water, starting with CL options only... and maybe trading CL futures as well to protect positions (maybe it's not necessary with this approach, but I'll literally start with one lots). Have to find my old MRCI Encyclopedia as a reference, but I think it only goes to 2005, so perhaps no longer of use.

Do you see any CL option trades on the horizon at present, please (I've noted your comment about typically looking 25 strikes out for Calls, 20 for Puts) ?

What contract is it? OK I figured it out it is Oct CL.

Here's mine.


I use settlement prices. It looks like TOS uses last traded price on that day. I put the same price for the previous last traded day for weekends and holidays so different years chart correctly over each other.

I added an average line (white). I do leave abnormal outlier years out of the average. Like LC and LH this year. Or CL 2008.

Hi Ron. Thanks for the thread. This looks like excel. Where did you get your data for the chart? I've got 1.5 years of data from the SPAN ftp site, but thats it. Would like to add more to backtest (good results so far).