John Stossel's Illegal Everything

Gamma is Cheap(er)

With the market making new yearly hi's (SPY chart below), the price of front month options in the SPY is priced considerably lower than its back month comrades. As depicted in the skew charts below, 2011 illustrated a common skew that we often see - front month options being most expensive based Implied Volatility, or IV, relative to the other series. As you can see in the final skew chart, front month options are pricing in very little movement for the coming weeks. This is not really surprising given the general outlook on the VIX and the market action seen earlier this week in the VIX options, where vol reeled some 6 pts lower in a single day. With the vol of the vol so to speak seemingly headed lower, gamma is currently cheap and maybe will be cheaper still. Nevertheless, it provides some intriguing possibilities and opportunities, not the least of which is a reversion to the mean trades (read short calendars - warning:could take a while) or outright long gamma positions to speculate or hedge against near term portfolio events. Happy trading.

http://seaofopportunity.blogspot.com/ 

VIX Vega beat down

Important to ask yourself why they are doing this?

http://seaofopportunity.blogspot.com/ *Special thanks to Option Radar, BMO Capital, MEB Options, Bloomberg, Reuters, Optionistics, LiveVolPro, CBOE, AMEX, Option Monster, T.O.P. group, and all of the options desks and traders we work with to provide the option flow! No position at this time. Position declarations are believed to be accurate at time of writing but may change at any time and without notice.

Trade Reviews - February 1st, 2012

5-minute BAC chart

Today was a clear trend-up day in BAC. We gapped up from yesterday's close and never came came close to closing it. In the first hour of trading, BAC broke through R1 and R2. It looked like $7.50 would be a target, but only reached $7.42. The profitable afternoon trades were to buy every VWAP touch.

http://seaofopportunity.blogspot.com/

*Special thanks to Option Radar, BMO Capital, MEB Options, Bloomberg, Reuters, Optionistics, LiveVolPro, CBOE, AMEX, Option Monster, T.O.P. group, and all of the options desks and traders we work with to provide the option flow!

No position at this time. Position declarations are believed to be accurate at time of writing but may change at any time and without notice.