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Calendar Spreads Tweak #4

Wednesday, September 21st, 2016

Today I would like to discuss how you can use calendar spreads for a short-term strategy based around the date when a stock goes ex-dividend. I will tell you exactly how I used this strategy a week ago when SPY paid its quarterly dividend.

Terry

Calendar Spreads Tweak #4

Four times a year, SPY pays a dividend to owners of record on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December. The current dividend is about $1.09. Each of these events presents a unique opportunity to make some money by buying calendar spreads using puts to take advantage of the huge time premium in the puts in the days leading up to the dividend day.

Since the stock goes down by the amount of the dividend on the ex-dividend day, the option market prices the amount of the dividend into the option prices. Check out the situation for SPY on Wednesday, September 14, 2016, two days before an expected $1.09 dividend would be payable. At the time of these prices, SPY was trading just about $213.70.

Facebook Bid Ask Puts Calls Sept 2016

Facebook Bid Ask Puts Calls Sept 2016

Note that the close-to-the-money options at the 213.5 strike show a bid of $1.11 for calls and $1.84 for puts. The slightly out-of-the-money put options are trading for nearly double the prices for those same distance-out calls. The market has priced in the fact that the stock will fall by the amount of the dividend on the ex-dividend day. In this case, that day is Friday.

SPY closed at $215.28 on Thursday. Friday’s closing price was $213.37, which is $1.91 lower. However, the change for the day was indicated as -$.82. The difference ($1.09) was the size of the dividend.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I decided to sell some of those puts that had such large premiums in them to see if there might be some opportunity there. While SPY was trading in the $213 to $216 range, I bought put calendar spreads at the 214.5, 214, 213.5, and 213 strikes, buying 21Oct16 puts at the even-strike numbers and 19Oct16 puts for the strikes ending in .5 (only even-number strikes are offered in the regular Friday 21Oct16 options). Obviously, I sold the 16Sep16 puts in each calendar spread.

Note: On August 30th, the CBOE offered a new series of SPY options that expire on Wednesday rather than Friday. The obvious reason for this offering involves the dividend situation. Investors who write calls against their SPY stock are in a real bind when they sell calls that expire on an ex-dividend Friday. First, there is very little time premium in those calls. Second, there is a serious risk that the call will be exercised by the holder to take the stock and capture the dividend. If the owner of SPY sold the series that expired on Wednesday rather than Friday, the potential problem would be avoided.

I paid an average of $2.49 including commissions for the four calendar spreads and sold them on Friday for an average of $2.88 after commissions. I sold every spread for more money that it cost (including commissions). My net gain for the two days of trading was just over 15% after commissions.

The stock fell $.82 (after accounting for the $1.09 dividend). If it had gone up by that amount, I expect that my 15% gain would also have been there. It is unclear if the gains would have been there if SPY had made a big move, say $2 or more in either direction on Friday. My rough calculations showed that there would still be a profit, but it would be less than 15%. Single-day moves of more than $2 are a little unusual, however, so it might not be much to be concerned about.

Bottom line, I am delighted with the 15% gain, and will probably try it again in three months (at the December expiration). In this world of near-zero interest rates, many investors would be happy with 15% for an entire year. I collected mine in just two days.

Trading SPY options is particularly easy because of the extreme liquidity of those options. In most cases, I was able to get an execution at the mid-point price of the calendar spread bid-ask range. I never paid $.01 more or received more than $.01 less than the mid-point price when trading these calendar spreads.

While liquidity is not as great in most options markets, it might be interesting to try this same strategy with other dividend-payers such as JNJ where the dividend is also over $1.00. I regularly share these kinds of trading opportunities with Terry’s Tips Insiders so that they can follow along in their own accounts if they wish.

Happy trading.

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Posted in Monthly Options, SPY, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

Calendar Spreads Tweak #2

Wednesday, September 7th, 2016

This week we will continue our discussion of a popular option spread – the calendar spread which is also called a time spread or horizontal spread. We will compare the expected costs and potential returns if you select different time periods for the long and short sides of the calendar spread.

Terry

Calendar Spreads Tweak #2

First, let’s look at a typical calendar spread on Facebook (FB). Today, the stock is trading just over $130, and you might buy an at-the-money calendar spread by placing this order:

Buy To Open 1 FB 16Dec16 130 call (FB161216C130)
Sell To Open 1 FB 14Oct16 130 call (FB161014C130) for a debit of $3.75 (buying a calendar)

This spread would cost about $3.75 ($375) to buy, plus $2.50 in commissions at the rate Terry’s Tips’ subscribers pay at thinkorswim, for a total of $377.50.

When the 14Oct16 call expires on October 14, 37 days from now, this is what the risk profile graph indicates the profit or loss would be at the various possible stock prices that might exist at that time:

 

Face Book Risk Profile #1 September 2016

Face Book Risk Profile #1 September 2016

Note that the break-even range extends from about $3.50 in both directions. The loss or gain when the short call expires on October 14th is indicated in the column on the lower right titled “P/L Day.” The maximum gain is precisely at the $130 price, and it is about $150 which would result in almost a 40% gain for the month.

When this calendar spread expires on October 14th, there will be 3 months of remaining life to the 16Dec16 call that you would hold. This call will always have some value that is greater than the 16Dec16 call that is expiring on that day, no matter where FB is trading at that time. This means you can’t lose the entire $377.50 that you have invested. The closer to $130 FB is at that time, the more valuable your 16Dec16 call will be in terms of remaining time premium.

Let’s check out what the situation might be if we went further out in time and bought a calendar spread that had both sides two months later. The difference between the long and short sides of the spread will remain at three months but you will have to wait three months rather than just one month to have the spread expire and you take your losses or gains. This would be the spread that you would buy:

Buy To Open 1 FB 17Mar17 130 call (FB170317C130)
Sell To Open 1 FB 16Dec16 130 call (FB161014C130) for a debit of $3.25 (buying a calendar)

This spread would cost about $3.25 ($325) to buy, plus $2.50 in commissions at the rate Terry’s Tips’ subscribers pay at thinkorswim, for a total of $327.50. (Buy the way, the regular commission on this spread at thinkorswim would be $7.80, and for this reason, many people choose to become Terry’s Tips subscribers because this low rate will extend to all the trades they make in their account, regardless of whether or not they are following one of our portfolios. The commission savings could be greater than the low monthly cost of being a subscriber).

When this spread expires on December 16th, this is what the risk profile graph would look like:

Face Book Risk Profile #2 September 2016

Face Book Risk Profile #2 September 2016

Note that the break-even range has more than doubled so that the stock can fluctuate about $8 in either direction before the spread starts losing money. Of course, you have to wait three months for December 16th to come around, and this gives the stock lots of time to make a big move in either direction. Again, the further it moves away from $130, the less money it makes. If the stock remains unchanged, and ends up at about $130 on that day in December, the expected gain is over $350, or more than 100% of the original cost of the calendar spread.

Presumably, you are trading calendars on a stock you believe is headed higher. If you believe that FB is likely to be trading about $5 higher three months from now, you might buy the same calendar at the 135 strike instead of the 130 strike. It would cost a little less, about $315, and this is what the risk profile graph looks like for December 16th:

Face Book Risk Profile #3 September 2016

Face Book Risk Profile #3 September 2016

If the stock stays flat, the spread will make about $150, or about 45% on your investment, but if it goes up $5 and ends up near $135, you could gain over $370, or well over 100% on your investment. The break-even range extends less than $5 to the downside and about $16 on the upside, so you will be rooting for FB to move higher over the three months.

The key point to selecting the strike price of calendar spreads is to make your best guess as to where the stock might be at the future date when the calls you have sold expire. If you are right, you could enjoy some extraordinary gains.

As usual, there are no easy ways to make sure gains in this world. You inevitably must make some sort of guess as to what the underlying stock will do. The neat thing about calendar spreads is that you don’t have to be precisely right. There is a fairly large range of possible stock prices withing which gains could come your way. The further out in time you go to select dates for a calendar spread, the greater the break-even range will be, and the maximum gain will always come if the stock ends up precisely at the strike price you select when you buy the spread.

As with all investments, you should only plunk down money that you can truly afford to lose. Option spreads can make excellent gains, but large movements in the stock price in either direction could cause losses with calendar spreads (unless you anticipated that direction and selected the right strike price at the outset).

Happy trading.

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Posted in Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

All About, or at Least an Introduction to Calendar Spreads

Thursday, August 25th, 2016

This week I would like start an ongoing discussion about one of my favorite option plays. It is called a calendar spread. It is also known as a time spread or a horizontal spread. But most people call it a calendar because that’s where you focus much of your attention while you hold this kind of a spread. On a specific date on the calendar, you discover whether you made or lost money since you first bought the calendar spread. In the next few blogs, I will discuss all sorts of variations and permutations you can make with calendar spreads, but today, we will focus on a bare bones explanation of the basic spread investment.

Terry

All About, or at Least an Introduction to Calendar Spreads

A calendar spread consists of the simultaneous purchase of one option (either a put or a call) and the sale of another option (either a put or call), with both the purchase and the sale at the same strike price, and the life span of the option you bought is greater than the option you sold. You can trade either puts or calls in this kind of spread, but not both in the same spread. You have to choose to use either puts or calls, but as we will see at a later time, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference which choice you make.

Some things that we all know about options: 1) they all have a limited life span, and 2) if the underlying stock does not change in price, all options fall in value every day. This is called decay. In option parlance, it is called theta. Theta is the amount that the option will decay in value in a single day if the underlying stock remains flat.

The basic appeal of a calendar spread is that the decay (or theta) of the option that has been sold is greater than the decay (or theta) of the stock that was bought. Every day that the stock remains flat, the value of the spread should become slightly greater. For this reason, most buyers of calendar spreads are hoping that the stock does not move in either direction very much (but we will see that is not always the case with all calendar spreads).

Here is a typical calendar spread purchase on Nike (NKE) on August 24, 2016 when NKE was trading just about $60:

Buy to Open 5 NKE 20Jan17 60 calls (NKE170120C60)
Sell to Open 5 NKE 23Sep16 60 calls (NKE160923C60) for a debit of $2.20 (buying a calendar)

The options that are being bought will expire on January 21, 2017 (about 5 months from now) and the options being sold will expire on September 23, 2016, one month from now. You don’t really care what the prices are for the calls you bought or the calls you sold, just as long as the difference between the two prices is $2.20 ($220 per spread, plus a commission of about $2.50 per spread). That’s how much money you will have to come up with to buy the spread. This spread order will cost $1100 plus $12.50 in commissions, or $1112.50.

The all-important date of this spread is September 23, 2016. That is the day on which the short options (the ones you sold) will expire. If the stock is trading on that day at any price below $60, the calls that you sold will expire worthless, and you will be the owner of 5 NKE 60 calls which have about 4 months of remaining life. If NKE is trading at exactly $60 on that day, those 20Jan17 60 calls will be worth about $3.05 and you could sell them for about $1525, netting yourself a profit of about $400 after commissions. That works out to a 35% gain for a single month, not a bad return at all, especially if you can manage to do it every month for the entire year (but now, we’re dreaming). That is, alas, the maximum you could make on the original spread, and that would come only if the stock were trading at exactly $60 on the day when the short calls expired.

Here is the risk profile graph which shows the loss or gain on the original spread at various prices where the stock might be trading on September 23rd:

2016 NKE Risk Profile Graph September Expiration

2016 NKE Risk Profile Graph September Expiration

In the lower right-hand corner under P/L Day, the profit or loss on the spread is listed for each possible stock price between $58 and $62. Those numbers should be compared to the investment of just over $1100. The graph shows the maximum gain takes place if the stock ends up right about $60, and about half that gain would result if the stock has moved a dollar higher or lower from $60. If it rises or falls by $2, a loss would result, but this loss would be much lower than the potential gains if the stock fluctuated by less than $2. If the stock moves by a much greater amount than $2, even greater losses would occur.

One good thing about calendar spreads is that the value of the options you bought will always be greater than the ones you sold, so you can never lose the entire amount of money you invested when you bought the spread. If you just buy a call option with the hopes that the stock will rise, or buy a put option with hopes that the stock will fall, you risk losing 100% of your investment if you are wrong. Even worse, in most cases, you would lose the entire investment if the stock stays flat rather than moving in the direction you were hoping.

With calendar spreads, you should never lose everything that you invested and you don’t have to be exactly right about the direction the stock needs to move. There is a range of possible prices where your spread will be profitable, and if you enter your proposed spread in a software program like the (free) Analyze Tab at thinkorswim, you can tell in advance what the break-even range will be for your investment.

There are ways that you can expand the break-even range so that a greater stock price fluctuation could be tolerated, and that will be the subject of our next blog.

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Posted in Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

The Difference Between Buying Stock and Trading Options

Monday, August 15th, 2016

This week I would like discuss a little about the differences between buying stock and trading options. I would also like to tell you a little about a specific recommendation I made to paying Terry’s Tips subscribers this weekend in my weekly Saturday Report.

Terry

The Difference Between Buying Stock and Trading Options

If the truth be known, investing in stocks is pretty much like playing checkers. Any 12-year-old can do it. You really don’t need much experience or understanding. If you can read, you can buy stock. And you probably will do just about as well as anyone else because it’s basically a roulette wheel choice. Most people reject that idea, of course. Like the residents of Lake Wobegone, stock buyers believe that they are all above average – they can reliably pick the right ones just about every time.

Trading options is harder, and many people recognize that they probably aren’t above average in that arena. Buying and selling options is more like playing chess. It can be (and is, for anyone who is serious about it) a life-time learning experience.

You don’t see columns in the newspaper about interesting checker strategies, but you see a ton of pundits telling you why you should buy particular stocks. People with little understanding or experience buy stocks every day, and most of their transactions involve buying from professionals with far more resources and brains. Most stock buyers never figure out that when they make their purchase, about 90% of the time, they are buying from those professionals. Those smart guys with all the resources are the ones who are selling the stock while you are buying it at that price.

Option investing takes study and understanding and discipline that the purchase of stock does not require. Every investor must decide for himself or herself if they are willing to make the time and study commitment necessary to be successful at option trading. Most people are too lazy.

It is a whole lot easier to play a decent game of checkers than it is to play a decent game of chess. But for some of us, options investing is a whole lot more challenging, and ultimately more rewarding.

Last week I told you about three stock-based Terry’s Tips option portfolios which had doubled in value and a fourth portfolio that was almost there (and it is only 10 months old). I didn’t tell you about two other portfolios that we also carry out which are not available for Auto-Trade at thinkorswim but which are quite easy to trade on your own because they only involve one trade for an entire year (and with luck, options on both side of the spread will expire worthless so no closing trade is necessary).

We have two of these portfolios, and they are set up each January. So far in 2016, while the market (SPY) has gained 4.6%, these two option portfolios have gained 43.9%, and 56.2% without a single adjusting trade having been made. We could close either portfolio right now and take those gains off the table after paying a small commission on one or two spreads. If you buy stock rather than trading options, you will probably never see gains like this, even if you are lucky enough to pick one of the best stocks in the entire market.

This weekend, I recommended another similar spread trade that we are setting up in a new portfolio so we can watch it evolve over time. Like the above two portfolios, it cannot be Auto-Traded but is easy to set up yourself (you can call it in to your broker if you are not familiar with placing option spread trades). This spread will expire on January 20, 2017, about six months from now.

The underlying is a sort of weird derivative of a derivative of a derivative that doesn’t make much sense to anyone (even the Nobel Prize winning managers of Long Term Capital didn’t fully understand the implications of this kind of instrument). The long-term price action of this equity can be measured, however, and it showed that if this spread had been placed every month for the last 50 months, the spread would have made a profit 44 times and it would have lost money 6 times. The average gain for all the trades worked out to 38% for six months (including all the losses in those 6 losing instances). The annualized gain would rise to 90% if you re-invested your money and the average profit at the end of the first six months. Of course, historical price action doesn’t always repeat itself in future months, but if you see how this instrument is engineered, you can see that the pattern should be expected to continue.

This spread idea is so good that I feel I must restrict sharing it with only paying subscribers to the Terry’s Tips newsletter. If you come on board, you can see the full report where I show the profit from this trade for each of the last 50 months and the exact spread that should be placed. I bought more of the exact same spread in my personal account today at the same price I indicated it could be bought in the last Saturday Report.

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Posted in 10K Strategies, Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

Historical Performance of 10K Strategy Stock-Based Portfolios

Monday, August 8th, 2016

This week I would like to outline the basic stock option strategy we use at Terry’s Tips where we have created eight portfolios each of which is traded in an actual separate account and is available for Auto-Trade at TDAmeritrade/thinkorswim. Terry’s Tips subscribers can have every trade in these portfolios placed automatically for them in their own thinkorswim accounts through their free Auto-Trade service.

Enjoy the full report.

Terry

Historical Performance of 10K Strategy Stock-Based Portfolios: At Terry’s Tips, we call our options strategy the 10K Strategy. We like to think of it as shorter than a marathon but longer than a sprint. Most people who trade options seem to prefer sprints, i.e., short-term speedy wins (or losses). The basic underlying idea of our 10K Strategy is to do the opposite of what most options traders do. Instead of buying short-term calls in hopes of a quick windfall gain, we primarily sell those calls to option speculators. Since something like 80% of all options expire worthless, we like our odds of selling those options rather than buying them. We like to think that we are sort of in the business of selling lottery tickets.

We buy longer-term options to use as collateral for selling short-term options. All options go down in value every day that the underlying stock remains unchanged. This daily decay in value is called theta in options parlance. Theta for short-term options is much greater than theta for longer-term options at the same strike price, and this difference in decay rates is what makes our strategy a successful one (most of the time).

At Terry’s Tips, we currently have 4 stock-based portfolios. Other portfolios are based on Exchange Traded Products (ETPs). ETPs include Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs) such as the S&P 500 tracking stock (SPY or the Dow Jones Industrial Average tracking stock (DIA), and Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) such as volatility-based XIV, SVXY, VXX, and UVXY. We also have a portfolio based on options of USO where we are betting that the long term price of oil will be higher than it is today.

Three out of 4 of our stock-based portfolios have doubled in value at some point in their lifetime, and the 4th, Foxy Facebook is up 71% since we started it 10 months ago. The prospects look excellent for it to double before its first year has been completed. The record:

2016 HIstorical 10K Portfolios

2016 HIstorical 10K Portfolios

In a world of record low interest rates and anemic investment returns for most equities (even hedge funds lost money in 2015), these results offer a strong vindication of the 10K Strategy. Admittedly, NKE has tumbled steadily over the past 8 months and much of the gains have been eroded away, but a basic assumption of the strategy is that you select underlying stocks which you think will remain flat or rise over time. If you are wrong and the stock doesn’t do one of those things, you should expect to lose money on that investment. So far, we have been fortunate enough to pick winners.

I invite you to become a subscriber to Terry’s Tips so that you can learn the important details of carrying out the 10K Strategy on your favorite stock (assuming that options are available for it). If you are lucky enough to pick a winner, you would have an excellent chance to make many times as much as you would make just buying the stock. It doesn’t have to go up to be a winner – just remaining flat is almost always profitable with this strategy.

Many years ago, someone wrote a book that I bought – it was entitled “Happiness is a Stock That Doubles in a Year.” If you can find a stock that will stay flat or move higher, you might very well enjoy this kind of happiness once you learn how to execute the 10K Strategy.

As with all investments, you should only use money that you can truly afford to lose. Options are leveraged investments, and unless you totally understand the risks, you can easily and quickly lose more money than you could with the equivalent investment in the purchase of stock. I think it is worth a little work to educate yourself about the risks (and potential rewards) of trading options.

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Posted in 10K Strategies, Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

Update on Facebook Earnings Announcement Play

Monday, August 1st, 2016

Last week, Facebook (FB) announced earnings which were triple the year-earlier results and were 88% higher than analyst expectations, but the stock barely budged from where it was the day before the announcement. Option players could celebrate, however. The actual portfolio at Terry’s Tips where we trade FB options gained 45.8% for the week. We have a lot of happy subscribers who follow this portfolio either on their own or through the Auto-Trade service at thinkorswim.

As good as 45% for a single week might be, you could have done even better if you had followed a trade I told you about 2 ½ months ago. That is the story I would like to share with you today.

Happy trading.

Terry

Update on Facebook Earnings Announcement Play

On May 11, 2016, I told you about two trades I was making in my personal account. You can see the entire blog which explains my thinking on our blog page. Here they are:

Today, I bought these calendar spreads on FB when the stock was trading just about $120:

Buy To Open 2 FB 16Sep16 120 calls (FB160916C120)
Sell To Open 2 FB 15Jul16 120 calls (FB160715C120) for a debit of $3.26 (buying a calendar)

Buy To Open 2 FB 16Sep16 125 calls (FB160916C125)
Sell To Open 2 FB 15Jul16 125 calls (FB160715C125) for a debit of $3.11 (buying a calendar)

My total investment for these two spreads was $1274 plus $10 commission (at the rate charged to Terry’s Tips subscribers at thinkorswim), for a total of $1284.

When these short calls expired on July 15th, FB was trading at about $122.50, just about the perfect place for me since it was right in the middle of the two strike prices of my spreads. On that day, I bought back the expiring 120 calls and sold 29Jul16 120 calls and collected $2.50 (selling a calendar spread). I sold this series because it would expire just after the July 27 earnings announcement.

I also sold the same calendar spread at the 125 strike price and collected $2.35. The net effect of these two trades (I collected $960 after commissions) reduced my net investment from $1284 to $324.

After Wednesday’s announcement, FB soared to $130 in after-hours trading, but opened at $127.52, and by late Friday when my short options were about to expire, it had fallen to about $124. I then closed out my positions by buying back the 29Jul16 calls and selling the 16Sep16 calls I still owned, collecting $2.10 per contract for the 120 strike calls and $3.10 for the 125 strike calls. After commissions, this worked out to a total of $1030, so I netted a profit of $706 on an original investment of $1284. Bottom line, I made 55% on my original investment for the 10 weeks I traded FB options.

Over this same time period, investors who owned FB stock made $4 per share on their money. If they invested $1284 like I did, they could have bought only 10 shares for $120 per share. Their gains for the 10 weeks would have been $40. My option trading made 17 times more money than the stock buyers would have made. Once again, I don’t understand why people would waste their money buying stock when they could spend a little time studying how to trade options, and make a multiple of what they could make by the simple buying of stock.

As with all investments, you should only use money that you can truly afford to lose. Options are leveraged investments, and unless you totally understand the risks, you can easily and quickly lose more money than you could with the equivalent investment in the purchase of stock. I think it is worth a little work to educate yourself about the risks (and potential rewards) of trading options.

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Posted in Earnings Announcement Options Strategy, Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

How to Trade Out of an Earnings-Related Options Play

Thursday, July 7th, 2016

A little over a week ago, I told you about trades I was making in advance of Nike’s earnings announcement. Lots of things didn’t quite work out the way I had expected they would, but I still managed to make over 50% for the week on my trades. There were some good learning experiences concerning how to trade out of calendar spreads once the announcement has been made. You need to tread water until the short options you sold expire and you can close out the spreads, and that can present some challenges.

Today I would like to share those learning experiences with you in case you make similar trades prior to a company’s earnings announcement.

Happy trading.

Terry

How to Trade Out of an Earnings-Related Options Play

According to Openfolio, a site where about 70,000 users share information on their investments, three out of four investors lost money in June, with an average return of -0.10%. This compares to the results of the Terry’s Tips’ Auto-Traded portfolios where 7 of 8 portfolios gained, and the average gain was 15.1%. Our only losing portfolio was a special bet that the short-term price of oil would fall. It didn’t, and we lost a little, but that was nothing compared to 4 of the portfolios which gained over 20% for the month.

One of our portfolios trades options on Nike (NKE) which announced earnings after the close last Tuesday, June 28. We had spreads in place similar to those that I told you about last week (and several others as well). The portfolio managed to gain 29% in June, something that often happens during the month when an earnings announcement takes place.

On the Monday before the earnings announcement, with the stock trading at about $52, I placed these trades (at higher quantities):

Buy to Open 1 NKE 29Jul16 52.5 put (NKE160729P52.5)
Sell to Open 1 NKE 1Jul16 52.5 put (NKE160701P52.5) for a debit of $.50 (buying a calendar)

Buy to Open 1 NKE 29Jul16 55 call (NKE160729C55)
Sell to Open 1 NKE 1Jul16 55 call (NKE160701C55) for a debit of $.50 (buying a calendar)

In my note to you, I said I thought you could buy these spreads for $.43 ($43) each, but that was based on the prior Friday’s prices. I was disappointed to have to pay so much more, but I still believed it was a pretty good bet.

When the stock fell closer to $51, I bought half as many spreads as the above two at the 50 strike just in case the stock continued to trade lower. When you buy calendar spreads, you select strike prices where you hope the stock will end up when the short options expire, as the at-the-money strike spread will be the most profitable. Buying spreads at several strikes gives you more places where you can end up being happy, but your maximum gain is reduced a bit when you buy the increased protection that owning several strikes provides.

After I made the above trades on Monday, I suffered my second disappointment. As I had seen so many times before, in the last day before the announcement (Tuesday), the stock rallied $1.10 and closed at $53.09. If I had anticipated this better, I would not have bought the spreads at the 50 strike. In after-hours trading after the announcement (earnings were a penny above estimates but sales disappointed a little and outlook was about what was expected), the stock tanked to about $50. As we have often seen, this initial move was quickly reversed. When the market opened on Wednesday, it had moved up to $54.50.

While my positions were showing a nice paper profit at the open on Wednesday, I had to wait to near Friday’s close to get the full amount I was hoping for. I was in a bad position, however, because most of my spreads were at strike prices which were below the stock price. In option terms, my positions were negative net delta – this means that if the stock went up another dollar, I would lose money. I aggressively changed to a neutral net delta condition by closing out the lowest-strike put calendars (at the 50 strike) and changing some 52.5 calendars to diagonals, buying back in-the-money 52.5 short calls and replacing them with at-the-money 55 calls and slightly out-of-the-money 56 calls in the same 01Jul16 series.

Then I encountered my third disappointment. I had expected implied volatility (IV) of the long 29Jul16 series to be 27 after the announcement based on recent history, but it ended up being 24 which dampened my expected results. That meant the option prices would not be as high as I expected when I went to sell them. I had figured an at-the-money spread could be sold for $1.40, and the closest spread I had (the 55 strike) only yielded $.97 (however, this was almost double what I paid for it). By Friday, the stock moved above the top strike price I held (55) and closed at $55.61. Since I managed to stay neutral net delta and actually pick up some extra premium in the last three days from the new at-the-money calls I sold, I ended up making over 50% on my total investment for the week. It was a lot of work but surely worth the effort.

I had set out to make 100% in a single week, and experienced disappointments in three different areas, but at the end of the day, I was pleased to take in half that amount for the week.

What could be taken away from this play was; 1) that the stock often rises in the last day before the announcement (probably legging into the calendars would have been more profitable, but more risky), 2) the initial move after the announcement is usually reversed, and 3) it is important to make adjustments to create a neutral net delta condition for all your spreads until the short options expire.

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Posted in Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

100% Gain in One Week Possible With Nike Options Trade?

Monday, June 27th, 2016

The Brexit vote on Friday crushed markets throughout the world, but it was a great day for Terry’s Tips subscribers who follow the eight actual portfolios we carry out for them to follow if they wish.  Our composite gain for the day was greater than 10%, and that was on a day when the Dow fell over 600 points and the market as a whole (SPY) dropped even more.

One of the portfolios we carry out is designed to protect against a market crash or correction.  We call it the Better Bear.  It gained 34% Friday when the markets tumbled.  Friday, like many days, was one when many of us are happy that we trade options rather than simply buy or sell shares of stock.

Today, I would like to share two trades I will be placing on Monday or Tuesday.  I think that there is an excellent chance that these trades could double my money in a single week.

Happy trading.

Terry

100% Gain in One Week Possible With Nike Options Trade? 

Nike (NKE) has fallen on hard times of late, falling from $68 in early December to $52.59 at the close on Friday.  Earnings will be announced after the close on Tuesday, the 28th. Whisper numbers are about 10% higher than public estimates, and options are priced for a higher price after the announcement.

I am an options trader and rarely ever buy stock.  I really don’t know if Nike will go up or down after the announcement, but there are some interesting features of the option prices that have caused me to take an interest in the company this week.  As I often repeat in this newsletter, implied volatility (IV) of the option prices is the major reason that option prices are “high” or “low” compared to other option prices.

Most of the time, our basic strategy involves buying calendar spreads at a variety of strike prices. A calendar spread (also called a time spread) consists of coincidentally buying and selling either put or call options at the same strike price.  The option you buy always has a longer time life than the option you sell.  Our gains come from the higher decay rate of the short-term options that we have sold compared to the lower decay rate of the longer-term options that we have bought.

Most of the time, when we buy these calendar spreads, the IV for the options we buy is greater than it is for the options we sell.  This means we are buying relatively more expensive options and selling relatively cheap options.  We don’t particularly like this, of course, but it is usually the nature of option prices.  Most of the time, we manage to make money on our calendar spreads in spite of this reality (which we call an IV disadvantage).

When a company is about to announce earnings, the IV disadvantage often turns into an IV advantage.  When a company announces, there is often a big move in the stock in one direction or the other immediately after the announcement.  The likelihood of this big move causes a surge in the option prices for the series which expires directly after the announcement.  In other words, IV soars for that series and almost always becomes greater than the longer-term series that follow.

The NKE option series which expires directly after the June 28 post-market announcement is the 1Jul16 series which expires on the following Friday.  IV for this series has surged to 53.  This compares to an IV of 30 for the 29Jul16 series which expires 28 days later than the 1Jul16 series.  This is a humungous IV advantage.  It enables you to buy relatively cheap options and sell relatively expensive options which have a long way to fall to get to their intrinsic value on expiration Friday.

When you buy calendar spreads, you choose a strike price which is closest to where you think the stock price will end up.  Since I really have no idea where that price might be for NKE, I take my best guess and select strike prices accordingly.  My best guess is that NKE has fallen so far already that the chances are better that it might move higher after tomorrow’s announcement.  After all, it is a good company, and they are still celebrating LeBron James’ victory in Cleveland (and he is a big spokesman for Nike).  With the stock closing at $52.59 on Friday, I will pick the 52.5 and 55 strike prices.  If I wanted to guess that the stock would fall after the announcement, I would pick the 50 strike as well.

Here are the trades I will make Monday or Tuesday (although the quantities will be greater):

Buy to Open 1 NKE 29Jul16 52.5 put (NKE160729P52.5)

Sell to Open 1 NKE 1Jul16 52.5 put (NKE160701P52.5) for a debit of $.43  (buying a calendar)

Buy to Open 1 NKE 29Jul16 55 call (NKE160729C55)

Sell to Open 1 NKE 1Jul16 55 call (NKE160701C55) for a debit of $.43 (buying a calendar)

I may have to adjust these prices a bit to get an execution, but at Friday’s close, these prices were possible.  Each spread will cost me $43 plus a $2.50 commission (the rate paid by Terry’s Tips’ subscribers at thinkorswim – many people become subscribers primarily to get this low rate which applies to all their trades – the normal commission rate at thinkorswim  for a single option spread trade is $7.80).

So I will be shelling out a total of $86 plus $5, or $91 for each pair of spreads I buy.  I am planning to close out (sell) both spreads near the end of the day on Friday, July 1st.  I have selected puts for the 52.5 strike and calls for the 55 strike because I am hoping that the stock ends up at some price between $52.50 and $55 on Friday.  If it does, then both the puts and calls I sold that will expire that day will be out of the money.  I should be able to buy them back for $.05 or less near the end of the day. Thinkorswim does not charge a commission if you buy back expiring options for $.05 or less.

The big question will be what value the 29Jul16 options will have next Friday.  To get an idea, I need to check back and see what the likely IV will be of those options at a time when there is no earnings announcement on the horizon.  I found that a typical IV for the series with 28 days of remaining life was 27.  That is 3 less than the current IV of those options.  This means that those option prices will fall, but not a whole lot.

If you go to the CBOE option calculator and enter in a price of either $52.50 or $55 and the same strike, select 28 days for the time period, and 27 as the IV, and hit Calculate, you will find that the option will be trading about $1.56 for the 52.5 strike or $1.64 for the 55 strike.  That means that if the stock ends up at either of the strike prices I selected, I will collect almost twice as much for a single sale as I paid for both spreads.  The other spread will also have some value.  If the stock is $2.50 away from one of the strikes, the CBOE calculator says the remaining long option will have a value of about $.65 which is still greater than what I paid for either spread, even after paying $.05 to buy back the expiring option.

If these option prices prevail next Friday and the stock ends up at any price between $52.50 and $55, I should be able to collect a total of about $225 (less $10 to buy back the expiring options less $2.50 for commissions, for a net of $212.50).  This amount is well more than double my total $91 investment for the pair of spreads.

What could go wrong?  First, IV might not be as high as 27.  If the stock stays flat, option prices might fall because they are based on the expected volatility of the stock – a flat stock suggests low future volatility.  Second, the stock might fluctuate so much that it moves well beyond the two strike prices I have picked.  That is the greatest fear.  But if that happens, volatility might even get greater than 27 for the options I will be selling, and that might result in a higher than expected price when I sell.

I feel highly confident about these spreads.  If the market tanks early in the week, I would buy spreads at the 50 strike as well.  As usual, I would like to remind everyone that options involve risk, and you should only invest money that you can truly afford to lose.

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Posted in Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

Lowest Subscription Price Ever Still Available

Thursday, June 9th, 2016

This month marks the 15th year in business for Terry’s Tips.  We are celebrating this event by offering you our lowest subscription price ever.  If you ever wanted to learn all about the wonderful world of options and my favorite options strategy, now is the time to act.

Lowest Subscription Price Ever

As our birthday present to you, we are offering the lowest subscription price than we have ever offered – our full package, including all the free reports, my White Paper, which explains my favorite option strategies in detail, and shows you exactly how to carry them out on your own, a 14-day options tutorial program which will give you a solid background on option trading, and two months of our weekly newsletter full of tradable option ideas.  All this for a one-time fee of $39.95, less than half the cost of the White Paper alone ($79.95).

For this lowest-price-ever $39.95 offer, click here, enter Special Code 15Year (or 15YearP for Premium Service – $79.95).  The premium service offers you real-time trade alerts so you can follow along with our trades if you wish, or participate in Auto-Trade at thinkorswim.

 This is a time-limited offer.  You must order by Wednesday, June 15, 2016. There’s no need or reason to wait that long, but that’s when the half-price offer expires, and you will have to go back to the same old investment strategy that you have had limited success with for so long (if you are like most investors).

This is the perfect time to our 15th birthday with us, and give yourself and your family the perfect birthday gift that is designed to deliver higher financial returns for the rest of your investing life.  It may take you a little homework on your part, but I am sure you will end up thinking it was well worth the investment.

Happy trading,

Terry

P.S. For this lowest-price-ever $39.95 offer for the complete Terry’s Tips package (including my White Paper for which over 10,000 people have paid our regular price $79.95), click here, enter Special Code 15Year (or 15YearP for Premium Service – $79.95).  It could be the best investment decision you ever make.

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An Options Play on Facebook Which Should Make 50% in 60 Days

Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

Today I would like to suggest an options trade on Facebook (FB). It will involve waiting 6 weeks to close out. Many option players have short attention spans and don’t like to wait that long. On the other hand, I think this trade has a very high likelihood of making a profit of at least 50%, even if the stock fluctuates more than we might like. To my way of thinking, it should be worth the wait, especially since I think that there is a very small likelihood that this play would end up losing money.

Terry

An Options Play on Facebook Which Should Make 50% in 60 Days

Over the past month I have suggested legging into calendar spreads in advance of an earnings announcement for 7 different companies (FB, COST, TWX, TGT, SBUX, and JNJ, and ABBV). In every case, I was personally successful at creating a calendar spread at a credit and guaranteeing myself a profit no matter where the stock price ended up after the announcement. You should have been able to duplicate every one of these successes as well. I got a kick out of having 7 consecutive winning trades, some of which made me more than 100% on my amount at risk.

The ultimate gain on these spreads will depend on how close the stock ends up to the strike price of my calendar spread after the announcement. The nearer to the strike, the greater the gain. It is fun owning a spread that you are certain will make a profit, no matter what the stock does.

Today’s idea is a little different. We will not be guaranteed a profit, but it looks quite likely to happen if our assumptions hold up. In each of the last two quarters when FB announced earnings, they were better than the market expected, and the stock rallied nicely. Who knows what will happen next time around when they announce once again on July 27?

If history is any indication, the stock price for FB doesn’t fluctuate very much between announcement dates. It tends to be fairly flat, or edges up a bit in the lulls between announcements, and often moves a little higher in the week or two before the announcement day.

Today, I bought these calendar spreads on FB when the stock was trading just about $120:

Buy To Open 2 FB 16Sep16 120 calls (FB160916C120)
Sell To Open 2 FB 15Jul16 120 calls (FB160715C120) for a debit of $3.26 (buying a calendar)

Buy To Open 2 FB 16Sep16 125 calls (FB160916C125)
Sell To Open 2 FB 15Jul16 125 calls (FB160715C125) for a debit of $3.11 (buying a calendar)

My total investment for these two spreads was $1274 plus $10 commission (at the rate charged to Terry’s Tips subscribers at thinkorswim), for a total of $1284.

Here is the risk profile graph which shows the profit or loss from those trades when the short options expire on July 15th:

 

Face book Risk Profile May 2016

Face book Risk Profile May 2016

You can see that if the stock ends up somewhere between $120 and $125 in two months, these spreads will make a gain somewhere near $550, or about 42% on the original investment. I think the stock is quite likely to end up inside this range. If I am wrong, and it falls by $5 or goes up by over $10, I will lose some money at that time, but in each case, the loss would be less than half my expected gain if it ends up where I expect it will.

As encouraging as this graph looks, I think it considerably understates how profitable the trades will be, and that has to do with what option prices do around earnings announcement dates. Since stock prices tend to have large fluctuations (both up and down) after the results are made public, option prices skyrocket in anticipation of those fluctuations.

When the 15Jul16 options expire on July 15, there will be a weekly options series available for trading that expires just after the July 27th announcement. It will not become available for trading until 5 weeks before that time, but it will be the 29Jul16 series.

Implied Volatility (IV) of the 15Jul16 series is currently 26 and the 16Sep16 series has an IV of 30. When the 29Jul16 series becomes available, IV will be much higher than either of these numbers, and should soar to near 60 when the announcement date nears (it grew even higher than that a few weeks ago before the last announcement). An IV that high means that an at-the-money call with two weeks of remaining life (which the 29Jul16 series would have when the 15Jul16 series expires), would be worth about $5, or almost double what the above calendar spreads cost us. If this were true, and if the stock is trading between $120 and $125, you could buy back the expiring 15Jul16 calls and sell the 29Jul16 calls at both strike prices for a credit which is greater than what you paid for the original calendar spread, and when those short calls expired, your long calls would still have 6 weeks of remaining life.

In other words, the strategy I have set up today by buying the above two calendar spreads is an admittedly complicated way to leg into two calendar spreads at a large credit, and guaranteeing an additional profit as well. The risk profile graph doesn’t reflect the fact that IV will soar for the 29Jul16 series that doesn’t exist yet, and the indicated gains are drastically understated.

I will update these trades as we move forward, and let you know if I make any adjustments. If the stock moves up to $125 in the next few weeks, I would probably add a third calendar spread at the 130 strke. That is about the only likely adjustment I can think of at this point, unless the stock falls to $115 when I would probably buy the same calendar spread at the 115 strike.

If you make this investment, as is true with all options investments, you should do it only with money that you can truly afford to lose. If you do choose to make it, I wish both of us luck over the next two months.

 

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Posted in Earnings Announcement Options Strategy, Monthly Options, Stock Option Trading Idea Of The Week, Stock Options Strategies, Terry's Tips Portfolios, Weekly Options | No Comments »

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