There are no free lunches on Wall Street and certainly not in options trading.
It might be sexy to tell people that we’re “options premium sellers” and suggest that all we do is sell naked options that expire worthless – while keeping all the premiums for ourselves. Easy peasy.
But we know that’s not really how it works.
There’s a risk in holding naked short options. Our brokerage houses are keenly aware of these risks – and that’s why they require us to post margin in order to hold these positions. The margin protects the house. Mostly their house, but our houses too.
When a short options position goes against us, our brokerages need to ensure we have adequate buying power in our accounts to close the position and prevent further losses.
But just because we need to post a certain amount of dollars to hold a position doesn’t mean we should calculate our returns off of that number. That number doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that it’s the amount the house needs in order to be comfortable with us being naked short.
There's a time to be aggressive and go for big gains, and there's a time to shoot for higher probabilities with smaller payout potentials.
I'm finding it hard to muster any conviction to go either long or short right now, as I can make compelling cases for both the bull and the bear thesis here.
In today's tape, my feeling is we need to err on the side of being too conservative and trade with a margin of safety.
So today, we're putting on what I feel to be a conservative, delta-neutral options trade in the technology sector ETF $XLK.
Depending on who you ask, people might agree that consumers are feeling the pinch of inflation. The sentiment that I encounter on a nearly daily basis is: "I can't believe how much _____ costs now. It's insane!"
If we look at a daily chart of the consumer discretionary stocks ETF $XLY, we might draw a conclusion that consumers are beginning to feel tapped out, as the upward momentum in early 2023 seems to have run out of steam.
With elevated options premiums in $XLY, this sets up a nice options premium collection play.
After slowly dipping my toes last week into the idea that it might be time to start getting into some new long exposure, the market's reaction to the latest Federal Reserve action tells me the direction is still sideways until further notice.
So we're literally betting on that today with a delta-neutral credit spread in the Russell 2000.
P.S. We do trades like this regularly. If you'd like to leverage Best-in-Class technical analysis into smarter directional options trades, try out All Star Options Risk Free! Or give us a call to learn more: 323-421-7991.
The post-fed interest rates decision hangover this week has thrown stocks back into the sideways slop zone. Therefore, until conditions change, we're going to keep selling premium to ride this out.
Today's trade is a defined risk premium collection play that gets us out just before earnings.
While the stock market continues to digest its recent run and weave through this sideways consolidation, we're starting to get some pretty clear hints on which stocks will likely be leaders if/when the bull market resumes.
Today's trade is an early bullish bet on one of those names.
Ok, that's a stupid question but I'm out of pithy headlines.
When the market more or less is only offering you one style of options trade that makes sense in this environment, things might get a bit monotonous around here. And when that happens, my brain offers up 'dad joke'-level headlines :)
But there's nothing boring about making money and our delta-neutral credit spread trades continue to work. So we're continuing with them with today's trade.
The hunt for premium selling opportunities continues. And today's trade is in a name that is heavily weighted in the Home Construction sector ETF, where options premiums -- sector-wide -- are a bit more elevated than the rest.
Thankfully, October options expiration happens the week before this company releases its next quarterly earnings report, so we don't have any of that event risk to worry about.