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.
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.
Eventually, even thick skulls like mine get the point.
Pretty much all summer long, the team here at All Star Charts has been mentioning Enphase Energy $ENPH as a strong outperformer that is on the verge of a potential epic breakout. During today's internal Analyst meeting, the team agreed that now is finally the time to get involved.
JC and I did a video on a possible trade in $ENPH ahead of today's Fed Reserve Interest Rates announcement. We did just get into it moments ago. Enjoy this video to get a great idea of why we like this trade and how we'll play it:
I know this might be breaking news to some of you, but there are often great opportunities to be had in international stocks. And the All Star Charts International Hall of Famers report regularly serves up the best setups out there.
Today's trade comes directly from the most recent report, so let's board the airplane and head abroad!
Every week, the team publishes the Follow The Flow report which surfaces unusual options activity. This is a report I reference often, not because I want to do the same trades that surface in the scan, but when I can find a technical setup that I like that is supported by the options flow, this can often lead to a bit of alpha with my own options strategy.
However, in today's case, I think I may jump aboard with the unusual options buyers and play along with them in a small-cap oil tanker.
What a wild week, eh? On Tuesday, the rug got pulled on dip buyers with the latest inflation data point coming in hot, throwing a whole bunch of confusion into the market regarding the future of interest rates. Or, so I'm told.
The net result for us options traders is that there is once again some juicy options premium for us to sell into. And we've got a bunch of sloppy ETF charts that look primed for some net sideways actions over the near term.
Today, it looked like the market wanted to continue yesterday afternoon's powerful late rally.
Well, it was not to be, as stocks have broadly declined since lunchtime and indices are in the red as I type this.
For me, this offers yet another opportunity to sell some delta-neutral options premium to continue providing some ballast to the directional bets in my portfolio.
With the rise in $VIX (the "fear gauge") over the past several trading days continuing to persist, we've been on the hunt for options premium selling opportunities. Higher volatility environments lend themselves to better opportunities for premium sellers who can manage their risks and size their positions conservatively.
As such, we're going to sell some premium in the banking sector to take advantage of elevated premiums and what appears to be a high likelihood of continuing sideways action.
With volatility still up since Friday afternoon's stock market freakout, we're going to continue to take advantage of this volatility rise to add an additional, much-needed delta-neutral credit spread to our portfolio to diversify our risks somewhat.
So today I'll be positioning into an index ETF near the top of the implied volatility charts.
"Jackson Hole" has delivered volatility once again. Seems we can always expect fireworks when the bigwigs gather at a luxury resort in the mountains. Must be nice...
We're going to take advantage of some of this volatility by positioning into a delta-neutral credit spread in the highest implied volatility ETF currently on the board.
That's right, we're in the 'hood. Robinhood stock $HOOD, that is.
Steve Strazza has been pounding the table about this name for so long that JC and I finally relented and agreed that it's starting to become that "put up or shut up" time.
With the stock swimming just below $10 per share, JC said: "Let's just leverage into this thing! If it's gonna work, we'll crush it. If it's not going to work, we'll know pretty soon. Below $9 we're out."