THREAD ON DELTA (The most important GREEK)

Many traders don't indulge in understanding GREEKS because they think they are very complicated.

There are 4 primary greeks:

Delta
Gamma
Theta
Vega

In my experience, understanding DELTA is enough to take benefit of greeks.(1/n)

@javia_savan You answered it yourself 🙂
Adjustment cost is way too high for bnf. Sometimes bnf does exceed nifty in vol crush, but nifty overall is more consistent.

10 mistakes in my 14 years of trading as an option seller 🧵

1. Staying neutral all the time. Majority of the years i have been a neutral option seller. I now realise that having a little sense of direction would have given me an added advantage with better utilisation of capital & also leverage (till the time it was available).

2. Too much importance on adjustments. Initially like most of the new option sellers, i had this notion that i can perfect my adjustment skills for any market conditions. Ofcourse i was wrong. Market is supreme & we need to respect it at times.

3. Not giving importance to greeks. For initial 6 years i didn't even know the existence of greeks. Since i started using them, option selling has become rather less complicated on the contrary of what most people believe.

4. Having too much confidence on the certainty of theta decay. Enough is said about it already. Theta decay is not an edge.

A THREAD

Topic: Why triple straddle has no real benefit.

A triple straddle is essentially an ATM Straddle & one or two step away straddle on either side. The position is almost neutral strategy just like any other neutral straddle or strangle.

1/

We can also view the position as an ATM straddle, a strangle & inverted strangle.

For example

Nifty: 14700

Triple straddle: 14600,14700,14800

Another view:

14700 straddle
14800-14600: strangle
14600-14800: Inverted strangle

2/

So the real question is what is the advantage of an inverted strangle over it's otm counterpart?

The answer is none.

They both have same premiums/theta. Only that slippages will be high in inverted strangle when we do the required adjustments plus liquidity issue.

3/

So isn't it better that instead of a triple straddle, we can just do ATM Straddle & 2* OTM strangle.

So in the above eg. the position will be

14700 ATM straddle
2* 14800-14600 otm strangle.

Same premium received, similar range just that there's no nuisance of ITM options.

4/

The question arises:

Why trade in an ATM straddle & 2* OTM Strangles? Why over-complicate?

Options are in itself a complicated instrument. Wouldn't it be better to stick to one straddle or a strangle & adjust accordingly?

Lesser the strikes, more there will be clarity.

5/

AN ESSENTIAL THREAD ON OPTION ADJUSTMENTS

Adjustments can be done in variety of ways & depends totally at the discretion of the trader. To get a clear mind we need to know the following:

1) What to follow,
2) How to make the adjustment,
3) When to make the adjustment. (1/5)

1) We need a way to measure the imbalance created by a delta move in an option strategy. We can measure through premiums, distance from index or delta of greeks (i personally use delta). So basically whatever way of measure we use, both sides should be equal in it. (2/5)

2) Adjustment can either be done by selling extra quantity of profitable side, buying the quantity of losing side or shifting both the sides. I personally shift the sides because with extra quantities our Gamma gets imbalanced & the risk increases if market reverses. (3/5)

3) While the first 2pts are objective, when to make an adjustment is totally subjective. It can be fine tuned through experience. It also depends upon what strategy u are using. For a short strangle the adjustment required is faster than a ratio spread or an IC. (4/5)

Straddle/strangle require faster adjustments because they are more vulnerable to delta or IV spike. Any other strategies like ratio spreads, ironfly, butterfly have some bought option, which can negate the spikes for a while. So we need a defined system as to WHEN to adjust.(5/n)

Understanding HIGH & LOW VIX

VIX at 16: If you check today's IV behaviour, they were not spiking much even with decent delta move in BNF. The movement was subtle, giving some time to adjust. So someone having good adjustment mechanism can stay in the game longer.

1/

VIX at 20: The same delta move will be more fierce, coupled with rise in premiums. When premiums rise with movement, then the adjustment cost increases exponentially. The premiums can fall back at EOD, but the damage is done if caught in the spike.

2/

After talking to few traders, their backtest result was in favor of high VIX of 2020, rather than 2017-19. The key flaw in the backtest were the adjustments which are not easy to calculate. Combination of high theta & fixed SL during high VIX, the IV crush is cashed at EOD.

3/

Neutral option sellers who don't adjust & have fixed SL on a static straddle will not be able to benefit highly in low VIX. The straddle which moves away from ATM will increase no matter what. But if we keep on rolling our strikes, then we get good realisation of theta.

4/

I have made majority of my profits in option selling when VIX was at 13-15, mostly just relying on my adjustments. Since 2020 with high VIX, adjustments stopped working because of increase in the frequency of delta + IV spike combos & so had to shift to directional trading.

5/

So what will be the aftermath of this GME event?

These are simply my guesses, I don't actually know.

Wallstreet will likely push for licenses being necessary to trade, or put more limits on how many trades you can make, or some other way to screw the average person trading. 1/

FYI, you can only make 4 trades in a day, but if you have more than $25,000 in your account you can make as many as you want.

The system is rigged against the poor, and weighted heavily in favour of the rich. 2/

Will the government shut down the market?

It's possible, but I doubt it.
It would open up new precedents and the optics would be terrible- i.e. shutting down the market because greedy hedgefunds fucked up, and normal people are taking them to the cleaners. 3/

If the government gives in to Wallstreet, they lose all credibility, because this story is basically David vs Goliath, where the Reddit guys are the good guys, and the hedgefunds are the bad guys.

4/

Likely they will implement similar rules to Europe, that stops naked short selling.

Anything more than that, I'm not sure.
I think the media will push the threat of the government shutting down trading, in order to scare people into selling, to give short sellers a way out. 5/

For fun I made a Robinhood account. It took me 5 minutes to sign up, get approved and transfer funds for trading...

Here's some details... Read on.

...it took me another 5 minutes to get qualified for options.

If I share a sign up I get "free shares" and I can share as much as I want up to 500$ worth.

The main UI has a prepopulated "list" of stocks/crypto to watch and links to news.

Clicking a stock opens a "trade" button that looks like this.

Notice options is first, buy second.

Options took me to an approval process (which took about a minute) and now away I go trading Baba options.

Buying stock looks like this. It emphasizes fractional shares.

Some observations and thoughts on ZILSwap: What went well, its impact on the $ZIL ecosystem and where we need to improve with some concrete plans that are being worked on. A thread:

👇

1/ ZILSwap was launched by @SwitcheoNetwork on Oct 5, 2020 (~2 months old). Soon after, we noticed for the first time, a flurry of ZRC-2 tokens (equiv. of ERC20s on $ZIL) getting launched on the network (even though the fungible token standard had been around for a while).

2/ The ability to provide a marketplace for people to exchange tokens was the trigger for deveopers to start issuing tokens and developing a token economy. In fact, there was a token for which, the entire supply was put on a ZILSwap pool w/o any team withholding.

3/ This was an extreme example of why a DEX was needed and the role it played in bootstrapping several tokens and respective token economies. Over 25 tokens are available on ZILSwap in the form of liquidity pools. The total pool size across all tokens is over USD 1 million.

4/ ZILSwap also made it possible for the first time for anyone to get access to $XSGD (the Singapore Dollar Stablecoin issued by @xfers). In fact $XSGD and $gZIL contribute the greatest proportion of the total pool.

Saturday Thread Time.
Re-Read interview of Ed Seykota from @jackschwager
book "Market Wizards". It's the most philosophical interview among all interviews. Needs to re-read it over and over.
@vivbajaj Sir, a re-tweet would be highly appreciated.

1. Systems don’t need to be changed. The trick is for a trader to develop a system with which he is compatible

2. The key to long-term survival and prosperity has a lot to do with the money management techniques incorporated into the technical system.

3. The profitability of trading systems seems to move in cycles. Periods during which trend-following systems are highly successful will lead to their increased popularity.

3.1 As the number of system users increases, and the markets shift from trending to directionless price action, these systems become unprofitable, and undercapitalized and inexperienced traders will get shaken out. Longevity is the key to success.

4. In order of importance to me are (1) the long-term trend, (2) the current chart pattern, and (3) picking a good spot to buy or sell.

How to manage risk in Option Selling?

10 frameworks to improve your risk management in 1 month:

Collaborated with @niki_poojary

In this thread you'll how to manage risk with:

1. Directional markets
2. Range-bound markets
3. Mtm stop loss
4. Booking profits
5. Overnight hedging
6. Event Risk
7. Position Sizing
8. No leverage
9. Reducing positions when wrong
10. Calculating risk upfront

Let's go ↓

Directional markets:

There is no point in the market being directional and you adjusting a non-directional trade.

As a general rule, you should only adjust once or maximum twice and then give up on firefighting.

Then you should side with a directional move.

Mistake of a non-directional trader:

Non-directional traders face heavy losses in directional markets.

If you are able to limit your losses in such scenarios, your risk management will improve.

The "I can adjust any move" mindset has to vanish for this to improve.

Big Range:

Moves in a big range are usually violent, and this is where non-directional traders lose money despite the fact that they are correct in assuming that the market is range bound.

Level-based stops work best in such an environment with reduced quantities.