Monthly Archives: September 2014

How to Handle an Option Assignment

Yesterday, the SVXY put we had sold in our ongoing demonstration portfolio was exercised.  While this is sort of an inconvenience to contend with, it will give us a learning opportunity.  People with little or no options trading experience are often concerned that something awful happens when an option they have sold is exercised.  This week’s experience should put their mind at ease.

Every Friday, we will make a trade in this portfolio and tell you about it here. Our goal is to earn an average gain of 3% a week in this portfolio after commissions.

I hope you find this ongoing demonstration to be a simple way to learn a whole lot about trading options.

Terry

How to Handle an Option Assignment

Yesterday SVXY fell over $5 a share as the market tanked and options volatility (VIX) soared.  Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens every once in a while.   It is the one thing that we can’t handle because we are betting that SVXY will move higher in most weeks (as it has about 75% of the time in the past).

We had sold a Sep4-14 90 put on SVXY (which expires today).  We sold it at a time when SVXY was trading about $89.  Yesterday it closed at $77.25, or almost $9 lower than it was last week.  Our short put got so far in the money (i.e., the stock price was much lower than the strike price of the put we had sold) that there was essentially no time premium remaining in this option.  Usually, the owner of any expiring put or call is better off selling their option in the market rather than exercising the option.  The reason is that there is almost always some remaining premium over and above the intrinsic value of the option, and you can almost always do better selling the option rather than exercising your option.

With the short option about $13 in the money, the owner of that option discovered that he couldn’t sell his option for more than its intrinsic value, so he exercised it.  He “put” the stock to us, forcing us to pay $90 for 100 shares at a time when the stock was trading for about $77.  When the market opened this morning we had 100 shares of SVXY in our account and no short put.

About an hour into the trading day, we placed an order to sell the shares, collecting $78.34.  The stock had rallied just over a dollar since yesterday’s close.  We then sold a put at the 81 strike price that will expire next Friday.  Here is the order we placed:

Sell To Open 1 SVXY Oct1-14 81 put (SVXY141003P81) for a limit of $4.10.  The order was executed at $4.11.

We usually try to sell a weekly put at a strike price which is about $1 out of the money (i.e., if the stock is trading at $78 we would like to sell a put at the 79 strike price).  We selected a strike which was $2 higher than that this week because we believe there is a good chance that SVXY will move higher than usual next week.  VIX is above 15, and for the past several months, it has averaged between 11 and 13. If it falls back to this range, SVXY is bound to move quite a bit higher.

We were short SVXY puts in one of our Terry’s Tips portfolios yesterday, and we bought them back and sold new puts for next week because the stock had tanked so much and we wanted to avoid an assignment.  We didn’t do it in this demonstration portfolio because I have told everyone that we would only be making trades on Fridays.

But the message here is that even when an assignment takes place, it is no big deal to trade out of it.  If you were short a put and it was exercised like we experienced this week, you just sell the stock and sell a new put.  If you were short a call, you would just buy back your short stock and sell a new call.  It’s that simple.

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins

Ongoing SVXY Spread Strategy – Week 6

Today we will continue our discussion of both SVXY and the actual portfolio we are carrying out with only two positions.  Every Friday, we will make a trade in this portfolio and tell you about it here.

Our goal is to earn an average gain of 3% a week in this portfolio after commissions.  So far, we are well ahead of this goal.

I hope you find this ongoing demonstration to be a simple way to learn a whole lot about trading options.  We will also discuss another Greek measure today – gamma.

Terry

Ongoing SVXY Spread Strategy – Week 6

Near the open today, SVXY was trading about $89.00.  We want to sell a put that is about $1 in the money (i.e., at a strike one dollar higher than the current stock price).  Our maximum gain each week will come if we are right, and the stock ends the week very close to the strike of our short put.

Here is the trade we placed today:

Buy to Close 1 SVXY Sep-14 86.5 put (SVXY140920P86.5)
Sell to Open 1 SVXY) Sep4-14 90 put (SVXY140926P90 for a credit limit of $2.70  (selling a diagonal)

Each week, we try to sell a weekly put which is at a strike about $1 in the money (i.e., the strike price is about a dollar higher than the stock price) as long as selling a diagonal (or calendar) spread can be done for a credit.

When we entered this order, the natural price (buying at the ask price and selling at the bid price) was $2.50 and the mid-point price was $2.75.  We placed a limit order at $2.70, a number which was $.05 below the mid-point price.  (It executed at $2.70).

If it hadn’t executed after half an hour, we would have reduced the credit amount by $.10 (and continue doing this each half hour until we got an execution).

Each week, we will make a trade that puts cash in our account (in other words, each trade will be for a credit).  Our goal is to accumulate enough cash in the portfolio between now and January 17, 2015 when our long put expires so that we have much more than the $1500 we started with.  Our Jan-15 may still have some remaining value as well.

This is the 6th week of carrying out our little options portfolio using SVXY as the underlying.  SVXY is constructed to move up or down in the opposite directions as changes in volatility of stock option prices (using VIX, the measure of option volatility for the S&P 500 tracking stock, SPY). SVXY is a derivative of a derivative of a derivative, so it is really, really complex.  Right now, option prices are trading at historic lows, and lots of people believe that they will move higher.  If they are right, SVXY will fall in value, but if option prices (i.e., volatility) don’t rise, SVXY will increase in value.  In our demonstration portfolio, we are assuming that option prices will not rise dramatically and that SVXY will move higher, on average, about a dollar a week.

In this simple portfolio, we own an SVXY Jan-15 90 put.   We will use this as collateral for selling a put each week in the weekly series that expires a week later than the current short put that we sold a week ago.  Today’s value of our long put is about $14 ($1200) and decay of this put (theta) is $4 (this means that if SVXY remains unchanged, the put will fall in value by $4 each day).  The decay of our short put is $13 (and will increase every day until next Friday).  This means that all other things being equal, we should gain $9 in portfolio value every day at the beginning of the week and about double that amount later in the week.

Last week we spoke a little about delta.  As you may recall, delta is the equivalent number of shares your option represents.  If an option has a delta of 70, it should gain $70 in value if the stock goes up by one dollar.  Today we will briefly introduce another options “Greek” called gamma.  Gamma is simply the amount that delta will change if the underlying stock goes up by one dollar.

If your option has a delta of 70 and a gamma of 5, if the underlying stock goes up by a dollar, your option would then have a delta of 75.  Gamma becomes more important for out-of-the-money options because delta tends to increase or decrease at faster rates when the stock moves in the direction of an out-of-the-money option.

To repeat what we covered last week, since we are dealing in puts rather than calls, the delta calculation is a little complicated.  I hope you won’t give up.  Delta for our Jan-15 90 put is minus 50.  This means that if the stock goes up a dollar, our long put option will lose about $.50 ($50) in value.  The weekly option that we have sold to someone else has a delta value of about 75 (since we sold it, it is a positive number).  If the stock goes up by a dollar, this option will go down by about $.75 ($75) which will be a gain for us because we sold that to someone else.

Our net delta value in the portfolio is +25.  If the stock goes up by a dollar, the portfolio should go up about $25 in value because of delta.  (Unfortunately, this gets more confusing when you understand that delta values will be quite different once the stock has moved in either direction, but we will discuss that issue later).

If the stock behaves as we hope, and it goes up by about a dollar in a week, we will gain about $25 from the positive delta value, and about $100 from net theta (the difference between the slower-decaying option we own and the faster-decaying weekly option that we have sold to someone else.

Our goal is to generate some cash in our portfolio each week.  This should be possible as long as the stock remains below $90. We will discuss what we need to do later if the stock moves higher than $90.

To update our progress to date, the balance in our account is now $1870 which shows a $370 gain over the 5 weeks we have held the positions.  This is well more than the $45 average weekly gain we are shooting for to make our goal of 3% a week.  We now have $1009 in cash in the portfolio.

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins

Ongoing SVXY Spread Strategy – Week 5

Today we will continue our discussion of both SVXY and the actual portfolio we are carrying out with only two positions.  Every Friday, we will make a trade in this portfolio and tell you about it here.

Our goal is to earn an average gain of 3% a week in this portfolio after commissions.  So far, we are well ahead of this goal.

I hope you find this ongoing demonstration to be a simple way to learn a whole lot about trading options.  We will also discuss some other options concepts today,

Terry

Ongoing SVXY Spread Strategy – Week 5

Near the open today, SVXY was trading about $86.  We want to sell a put that is about $1 in the money (i.e., at a strike one dollar higher than the current stock price).  Our maximum gain each week will come if we are right, and the stock ends the week very close to the strike of our short put.

Here is the trade we placed today:

Buy to Close 1 SVXY Sep2-14 86.5 put (SVXY140912P86.5)
Sell to Open 1 SVXY Sep-14 86.5 put (SVXY140920P86.5) for a credit limit of $1.20  (selling a calendar)

Each week, we try to sell a weekly put which is at a strike about $1 in the money (i.e., the strike price is about a dollar higher than the stock price) as long as selling a diagonal (or calendar) spread can be done for a credit.

When we entered this order, the natural price (buying at the ask price and selling at the bid price) was $.85 and the mid-point price was $1.25.  We placed a limit order at $1.20, a number which was $.05 below the mid-point price.  (It executed at $1.20).

If it hadn’t executed after half an hour, we would have reduced the credit amount by $.10 (and continue doing this each half hour until we got an execution).

Each week, we will make a trade that puts cash in our account (in other words, each trade will be for a credit).  Our goal is to accumulate enough cash in the portfolio between now and January 17, 2015 when our long put expires so that we have much more than the $1500 we started with.  Our Jan-15 may still have some remaining value as well.

This is the 5th week of carrying out our little options portfolio using SVXY as the underlying.  SVXY is constructed to move up or down in the opposite directions as changes in volatility of stock option prices (using VIX, the measure of option volatility for the S&P 500 tracking stock, SPY). SVXY is a derivative of a derivative of a derivative, so it is really, really complex.  Right now, option prices are trading at historic lows, and lots of people believe that they will move higher.  If they are right, SVXY will fall in value, but if option prices (i.e., volatility) don’t rise, SVXY will increase in value.  In our demonstration portfolio, we are assuming that option prices will not rise dramatically and that SVXY will move higher, on average, about a dollar a week.

In this simple portfolio, we own an SVXY Jan-15 90 put.   We will use this as collateral for selling a put each week in the weekly series that expires a week later than the current short put that we sold a week ago.  Today’s value of our long put is about $14 ($1400) and decay of this put (theta) is $4 (this means that if SVXY remains unchanged, the put will fall in value by $4 each day).  The decay of our short put is $13 (and will increase every day until next Friday).  This means that all other things being equal, we should gain $9 in portfolio value every day at the beginning of the week and about double that amount later in the week.

Let’s talk a little about delta today.   Delta is the measure of how much the option will increase in value if the underlying stock moves $1 higher.  You can check out the delta value of a single option or your entire portfolio at any time.  Puts have a negative delta value and calls have a positive value.  If you have sold someone else an option, then your short position is positive if it is a put, or negative it is a call.

Most options traders like to maintain a delta-neutral portfolio condition.  This means they don’t care if the stock goes up or down, at least for small changes.  In our little SVXY strategy, we want to be a little bullish in our portfolio, so we are aiming for a net-delta-positive condition.

To repeat what we covered last week, since we are dealing in puts rather than calls, this is a little complicated.  I hope you won’t give up.  Delta for our Jan-15 90 put is minus 50.  This means that if the stock goes up a dollar, our long put option will lose about $.50 ($50) in value.  The weekly option that we have sold to someone else has a delta value of about 75 (since we sold it, it is a positive number).  If the stock goes up by a dollar, this option will go down by about $.75 ($75) which will be a gain for us because we sold that to someone else.

Our net delta value in the portfolio is +25.  If the stock goes up by a dollar, the portfolio should go up about $25 in value because of delta.  (Unfortunately, this gets more confusing when you understand that delta values will be quite different once the stock has moved in either direction, but we will discuss that issue later).

If the stock behaves as we hope, and it goes up by about a dollar in a week, we will gain about $25 from the positive delta value, and about $100 from net theta (the difference between the slower-decaying option we own and the faster-decaying weekly option that we have sold to someone else.

Our goal is to generate some cash in our portfolio each week.  This should be possible as long as the stock remains below $90. We will discuss what we need to do later if the stock moves higher than $90.

To update our progress to date, the balance in our account is now $1890 which shows a $390 gain over the 4 weeks we have held the positions.  This is more than double the $45 average weekly gain we are shooting for to make our goal of 3% a week.  We now have $744 in cash in the portfolio.

Next Friday we will make another similar trade and I will keep you posted on what we do.

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins

Ongoing SVXY Spread Strategy – Week 4

 

Today we will continue our discussion of both SVXY and the actual portfolio we are carrying out with only two positions.  Every Friday, we will make a trade in this portfolio and tell you about it here.

 

Our goal is to earn an average gain of 3% a week in this portfolio after commissions.

 

I hope you find this ongoing demonstration to be a simple way to learn a whole lot about trading options.

 

Terry

 

Ongoing SVXY Spread Strategy – Week 4

 

Near the open today, SVXY was trading about $86.  We want to sell a put that is about $1 in the money (i.e., at a strike one dollar higher than the current stock price).  Our maximum gain each week will come if we are right, and the stock ends the week very close to the strike of our short put.

 

Here is the trade we placed today:

 

Buy to Close 1 SVXY Sep1-14 86.5 put (SVXY140905P86.5)
Sell to Open 1 SVXY Sep2-14 86.5 put (SVXY140912P86.5) for a credit limit of $1.15  (selling a calendar)

 

When we entered this order, the natural price (buying at the ask price and selling at the bid price) was $.85 and the mid-point price was $1.25.  We placed a limit order at $1.15, a number which was $.05 below the mid-point price.  (It executed at $1.16).

 

If it hadn’t executed after half an hour, we would have reduced the credit amount by $.10 (and continue doing this each half hour until we got an execution).

 

Each week, we will make a trade that puts cash in our account (in other words, each trade will be for a credit).  Our goal is to accumulate enough cash in the portfolio between now and January 17, 2015 when our long put expires so that we have much more than the $1500 we started with.  Our Jan-15 may still have some remaining value as well.

 

This is the 4th week of carrying out our little options portfolio using SVXY as the underlying.  SVXY is constructed to move up or down in the opposite directions as changes in volatility of stock option prices (using VIX, the measure of option volatility for the S&P 500 tracking stock, SPY). SVXY is a derivative of a derivative of a derivative, so it is really, really complex.  Right now, option prices are trading at historic lows, and lots of people believe that they will move higher.  If they are right, SVXY will fall in value, but if option prices (i.e., volatility) don’t rise, SVXY will increase in value.  In our demonstration portfolio, we are assuming that option prices will not rise dramatically and that SVXY will move higher, on average, about a dollar a week.

 

In this simple portfolio, we own an SVXY Jan-15 90 put.   We will use this as collateral for selling a put each week in the weekly series that expires a week later than the current short put that we sold a week ago.  Today’s value of our long put is about $14 ($1400) and decay of this put (theta) is $4 (this means that if SVXY remains unchanged, the put will fall in value by $4 each day).  The decay of our short put is $13 (and will increase every day until next Friday).  This means that all other things being equal, we should gain $9 in portfolio value every day at the beginning of the week and about double that amount later in the week.

 

Let’s bring a couple of other option terms into this conversation.  First, we are bullish on the stock (we are betting that contango will continue to exist and provide more tailwinds for the stock than increasing volatility will hurt the stock).  When you are bullish on a stock, you want to own a portfolio that is delta-positive.  Delta is the measure of how much the option will increase in value if the underlying stock moves $1 higher.

 

Most options traders like to maintain a delta-neutral portfolio condition.  This means they don’t care if the stock goes up or down, at least for small changes.  We want to be a little bullish in our portfolio, so we are aiming for a net-delta-positive condition.

 

Since we are dealing in puts rather than calls, this is extremely complicated.  I hope you won’t give up.  Delta for our Jan-15 90 put is minus 50.  This means that if the stock goes up a dollar, our long put option will lose about $.50 ($50) in value.  The weekly option that we have sold to someone else has a delta value of about 75 (since we sold it, it is a positive number).  If the stock goes up by a dollar, this option will go down by about $.75 ($75) which will be a gain for us because we sold that to someone else.

 

Our net delta value in the portfolio is +25.  If the stock goes up by a dollar, the portfolio should go up about $25 in value because of delta.  (Unfortunately, this gets more confusing when you understand that delta values will be quite different once the stock has moved in either direction, but we will discuss that issue later).

 

If the stock behaves as we hope, and it goes up by about a dollar in a week, we will gain about $25 from the positive delta value, and about $100 from net theta (the difference between the slower-decaying option we own and the faster-decaying weekly option that we have sold to someone else.

 

Our goal is to generate some cash in our portfolio each week.  This should be possible as long as the stock remains below $90. We will discuss what we need to do later if the stock moves higher than $90.

 

We paid a commission of $2.50 for this trade, the special rate for Terry’s Tips customers at thinkorswim.  The balance in our account is now $1730 which shows a $230 gain over the three weeks we have held the positions.  This is much more than the $45 average weekly gain we are shooting for to make our goal of 3% a week.  We now have $624 in cash in the portfolio.

 

Next Friday we will make another similar trade and I will keep you posted on what we do.

 

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins