Premiums remain elevated in the options market as volatility persists and confusion among market participants reigns supreme.

We sold a delta neutral spread on Friday to take advantage of this environment. Today’s trade will also be a credit spread, however, this time we will be taking on some bearish directional exposure to counterbalance some of our long exposure.

[Read more…]

We recently closed an October Short Strangle in the Energy ETF $XLE at our profit target. The timing was pretty fortuitous, considering the wild ride all stocks have been on since the latest Federal Reserve interest rates announcement.

With volatility ticking backup up quite noticeably, $XLE has climbed back up near the top of my implied volatility list of ETFs, and the November options are priced in such a way that we can sell some pretty far out-of-the-money strikes increasing our odds of success.

So let’s get right to it. [Read more…]