Author Archive for Terrapin Trader
First found out about options in 1995.From the arcane magazine Exchange and Mart! First trade- a covered call on VOD in 1999. Made 10%,VOD almost doubled. That's when I realised I was not a good trader,and I was forgiven thanks to the amazing world of exchange traded options
Trade 89 Nothing Like a Butterfly
Limited But Almost Assured Upside? The usual media suspects are trotting out the usual line- earnings season, earnings beating expectations etc. I have no inside track but seriously? Debt overwhelms any sort of growth. Why wouldn’t you borrow at 1% buy your own stock and make 5%? Company insiders know what’s going on but they […]
That Was The Week- Expiring 20th July
Here’s One We Made Earlier Trade 87 Buy1 (one) 7550 put paying 44 we are SELLING, 3 that’s three of the 7400 puts for 16.5 each= 49.5. A credit of 5.5 .The 7400 puts were 3.5, the 7550 was 19.(Closing prices Mon 16th July). Thus you could have made a cheeky 8.5+5.5 credit= 14. Margin would have […]
Trade 88 Playing Not To Lose
Trade 87-So We Win Tiny, There’s Still Hope Trade 87-from last week:We were buying 1 (one) 7550 put paying 44(Lewis Hamilton’s number) and we are SELLING, get this… 3 that’s three of the 7400 puts for 16.5 each= 49.5. A credit of 5.5 but that is really not the point. Sorry for Lewis Hamilton too! Biiiig […]
That Was The Week Ending 13July
Treading Water With Some Strange Days With the bizarre 1.3% drop on Wednesday and the ‘buy the dip’ crowd on thursday, FTSE went from 7688 to 7662. I have mentioned before the 7650 level which seems to have some kind of attraction. These moves are great when we are selling premium. So personally I have […]
Trade 87 A Doofer? A Fiver? Nah- a Threefer
Meanwhile back at the Factory…….. Trade 86-remember? Course not. Here it is: We are selling 2July 7100 puts(14×2=28), buying 1 August7100 put for 30. We are selling 2 July 7800 calls( 23.5×2=47) And buying 1August 7800 call for 48.5 So, this is a debit trade, therefore at a cost of (30-28)+ (48.5-47)= 2+1.5.=3.5 Here is where […]
That Was The Week Ending 06July
A Week of Economic Data A great free resource https://www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php and this: https://www.bls.gov Meanwhile in our own special corner of the globe, the FTSE’s volumes have dried up somewhat to around 600 million daily. We used to see 2 billion daily, long ago,but this time of year, the bosses go away. The junior manager left to oversee things […]
Mentoring- Problem Solving. 80+ Trades and no feedback???
By Helping you, we Gain Insights too We have always wanted a regular group of traders of varying ability, to meet with-in the flesh or online. The reasons are pretty obvious. We get to see who is doing what. Seeing what works or where the problems are. While we know an awful lot of strategies […]
Trade 86 Dead Calm, No Sign of Troubles Ahead(?)
Trades 84 & 85 Nothing To Report As the week ended pretty much flat- totally flat at 3:00 pm on Friday in fact, then the market swooned. Our 2 trades will have an outcome but in 2-3 weeks. In the interim they could do something profitable but not hugely likely. Patience,patience- or in options parlance […]
That Was The Week Ending 29June
When The Market Goes Nowhere We’ve dropped some 40 points on the week but the uppy/downy allowed this trader to enter more positions. The more important value though is the VFTSE. For each of us the criteria may be different but on the whole, we sell more options than we buy when Vol is high. […]
Trade 85 Not Just ‘Any Old Iron’
Trade 84- Nothing To Report With 26 days to expiry, Trade 84 is pretty much where we left it, so nothing to do but wait until we get near expiry. This is the natural cycle of events with options of course, where we use theta to our advantage. Time decay is no guarantee of trade […]
