THREAD ON IRONFLY

These days the most preferred strategy for option sellers due to improved margins is IRONFLY. It's essentially a short straddle with long strangle. Long strangle acting as 'WINGS', which help in capping the unlimited risk associated with a short straddle.(1/n)

You can also view the position as a combination of Cal & Put credit spreads, if that makes it more easy for you.

There are 3 important things to understand while trading this strategy:

1) Initial size of the Wings
2) Risk Management
3) Adjustments

(2/n)
Since we are selling an ATM straddle, the 1st question is how far our wings should be? Ideally i sell .50 delta straddle & buy .20 or .10 OTM strangle, depending on my view on volatility. So the distance of wings depends on the IV setup. Higher the IVs, greater the distance.(3/n)
If you don't understand greeks, then ideally with 30 days to expiry (dte), wings should be around 300pts either side. If your trading in weekly then it should be not more than 200pts. Higher the premiums, higher the distance as we have more cushion of theta. (4/n)
It is important to understand that we need to reduce the distance of wings with time so as to manage our RISK in gap openings or sudden volatile move. So for eg. if you started with 300pt wings with 30dte, the wings wouldn't give the same protection when there is 7dte. (5/n)
So as the premiums decay, we need to gradually reduce the distance of wings.

Now on to ADJUSTMENTS. When the index moves it is important to also move with it in this strategy. This is because if we don't then the initial credit received will reduce drastically. (6/n)
An example. Nifty is trading at 13500. You sell 13500 straddle & buy 13800-13200 strangle. If Nifty moves 200pts up, your sold straddle will have lesser theta value & your strangle will have higher as 13800 cal will increase. So your overall credit will drastically reduce. (7/n)
So if market moves one direction, one sold option becomes ITM (means less credit) & one wing comes closer to ATM (means higher debit). So the overall theta received becomes less or even nil. That's a practical problem which is why adjustment is required to receive max theta.(8/n)
For how to do adjustments, best way is to treat Ironfly as a straddle with added protection. So try to keep the straddle near to ATM & when the wings are tested only then adjust them. This way you'll always have maximum credit received which is important in this strategy. (9/n)
What i have explained is a neutral approach on how to trade Ironfly with max credit received. Many try to trade it by exiting the losing leg & keep a TSL on the winning leg. Personally I'm not a fan of this way but that's because I don't want to trade direction like this.(10/n)
Many advocate Ironfly as an easy 4% strategy. It's not. Requires expertise in when to adjust & how much the wing size should be. With experience such issues can be dealt with. Overall it's a good strategy specially for those who want to take less risk with limited capital.(11/n)

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1. The death of Silicon Valley, a thread

How did Silicon Valley die? It was killed by the internet. I will explain.

Yesterday, my friend IRL asked me "Where are good old days when techies were


2. In the "good old days" Silicon Valley was about understanding technology. Silicon, to be precise. These were people who had to understand quantum mechanics, who had to build the near-miraculous devices that we now take for granted, and they had to work

3. Now, I love libertarians, and I share much of their political philosophy. But you have to be socially naive to believe that it has a chance in a real society. In those days, Silicon Valley was not a real society. It was populated by people who understood quantum mechanics

4. Then came the microcomputer revolution. It was created by people who understood how to build computers. One borderline case was Steve Jobs. People claimed that Jobs was surrounded by a "reality distortion field" - that's how good he was at understanding people, not things

5. Still, the heroes of Silicon Valley were the engineers. The people who knew how to build things. Steve Jobs, for all his understanding of people, also had quite a good understanding of technology. He had a libertarian vibe, and so did Silicon Valley
the whole point of Dunks was you could go cop them at VIM whenever you wanted for $65. this shit is like having to enter a raffle to buy milk.


like seriously why not make a ton more of them if they're gonna be so sought-after? they land at outlets? so? nike still makes money off that.

the only reason to keep making them so limited is that they KNOW all that matters is the profit on the flip and if they were readily available FEWER people would want them, not more

the whole system is super broken, but it's just gonna go the way it goes, because at this point it all caters to the secondary market. the only reason Nike can sell Jordan 1s for $200 is because the people buying them can flip them for $500

adjusted for inflation, a $65 AJ1 in 1985 is like $160—and modern-day AJ1s are made from cheaper materials in factories staffed by cheaper workers. they don't HAVE to be $200 retail. but the secondary market nuked the whole concept of what sneakers are "worth"

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