Assumes working knowledge of options and a willingness to learn about new things — like volatility
I’ve been watching Citigroup’s new CVOL volatility ETN (a souped up competitor to Barclays’ VXX) since it started trading November 15th. Tracking its actual performance has been difficult because it is very lightly traded. Charts for example are useless. Normally I use Yahoo’s Finance historical quotes feature as a very convenient way to get open /high / low / close data that I can export …
I created a bear spread on IEF, using a $0.50 credit combo order to sell Dec 98 calls and buy Dec 101 calls. The order filled at 0.57 and 0.07 respectively. The straight market quote at the time for the spread was $0.40 (0.50 bid on the 98s and 0.1 ask on the 101s).
Options on the “new” GM are now available. Created a bear spread, selling Dec 34’s at 0.75 and buying Dec 36s at 0.20 for a net credit of 0.55. GM is currently at 33.60.
Easy way: If you want to short VXX the simplest way is to buy Volatility Share’s SVIX. This Exchange Traded Funds tracks -1X the daily percentage moves of VXX so it isn’t a true short, but it has the same goal—going up when VXX goes down. They carry annual investment fees (SVXY’s is 1.35%), which I doubt is an issue for you if you’re thinking …
The CBOE has announced a nice new email service for people wanted to know what weekly options are going to be offered each week. While the list has been relatively stable the CBOE recently extended the list to 35 offerings and they usually make a few tweaks each week. For example, they recently dropped USO in favor of NDX—something I’m not happy about. They …
