Reason 1: Technical Analysis cannot predict the future People who say Technical Analysis does not work think TA is a tool to predict the future. I must admit I was one of them. Obviously, no one can predict the future. What people misunderstand is that TA is a tool to provide “actionable points” in the […]
Have you ever noticed that VIX seems to go lower on Fridays (VIX Weekend effect) and jump back higher on Mondays (VIX Monday effect)? This is not really something new, especially for traders like us who trade VIX options. In fact, this has been discussed by other VIX-related blogs such as this one and this one. […]
I bet you probably thought this was going to be another “buy VIX future or options to prepare for a market crash” article. Sorry to disappoint you but I am not going to recommend that in this article. What I will discuss though, is provide some examples of how using VIX, VIX9D, VIX3M, and VIX6M […]
It’s that time of the year again when stocks typically underperform. The end of Summer and the beginning of Fall. Don’t ask me why but that’s what the data tells us (see graphs below). There are multiple theories as to why this happens every year and as a human, we like to attach a simple […]
After the recent minor market corrections largely due to inflation fear, I have seen so many people discussing and asking what they should do with their losing positions on various online forums. I feel for them because I used to be one of them. This doesn’t mean I don’t hesitate any more and just close […]
When it comes to trading styles and strategies, they can be grouped in so many different ways. Day trading, Swing trading, Momentum trading, Scalping, etc. To me, all of these types of trading sound hectic. They all require active monitoring of stock price, stock movement, stock news, etc etc etc. I have personally tried a […]
December typically is when everybody slows down and celebrates holidays. So naturally one would think the market volatility should also decline in December. I decided to do a quick calculation with VIX historical data (2004 – 2017) to find out if VIX has always gone down in December from November. While the calculation methods I […]
Short-selling PUT is done when one is expecting the underlying equity would go up. I know open positions in anticipation of VXX going up is not a good strategy in the long run. VIX and VIX ETPs are most of the time in contango, so a question I had was “Would option time decay be […]
You have probably heard it before. Trading options with 45 days to expiration (DTE) is the sweet spot. This is also what I have been doing since I learned that information from Tastytrade.com and Optionalpha.com. The following slides taken from this Tastytrade.com video further solidifies that claim. The key here is the Average P/L per […]
While doing some research on how to sell Iron Condor in a low volatility environment, I came across to a video that talks about time decay made by Tastytrade. The image below is taken from the video and it shows Theta (time decay) against Days to Expiration (DTE). When it’s 75 DTE, 90% Out of the […]
I know there are people out there manage to make consistent 20% by just simply selling major indexes such as SPX and/or SPY continuously. One question I had was about Implied Volatility. Would such trades still work even in the low IV environment? Logically, it should right? Otherwise these people who are doing it wouldn’t […]
Ever since I came across to Trade Apgar in early 2017, I wanted to know if this method would actually work for the type of option trades that I do. Fortunately, I already had some directional trades done in 2016 (Double Diagonal / Diagonal trades) so I used the “Ondemand” feature in Thinkorswim to analyse what I did. […]