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The "Daily Call" From Option Alpha: Options Trading | Stock Options | Stock Trading | Trading Online

#800 - The "Daily Call" Podcast Finale

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why every 18 years on average, investors lose half of their money. As we kind of wrap up 2019 and we start getting towards 2020, a brand-new decade, I think it’s important that we just remind ourselves of just how volatile markets can be moving forward in the future and how good we’ve really had it over the last 13 years as far as volatility, market shocks and black swans are concerned. We really haven’t had any major market movements in the last 13 years for US markets and that is a rare thing. And so, that would lead me to believe that in the future, potentially even the near future, the next couple of years, two years, three years or so, we’re going to have a significant move in the market in one fashion or another. And so, I want to revisit some of the things that we talked about actually in our weekly podcast show number 15 which is a really, really long time ago, we started looking at market drawdowns and crashes and started to build some numbers and some data points, some references around how often and how big market moves actually happen. And the first one is that on average, every 18 years, investors lose half of their money. Now, 18 years is a long time, but a 50% drawdown every 20 years or so is a significant move and in many cases, can set you back considerably towards your financial goals. And so, my goal is to of course, avoid situations like this. This is exactly why we started implementing a more aggressive VIX hedge strategy just in the last couple of months because we’re coming up on 13 years here of no major market volatility and I am more than willing to pay a little bit of money to hedge some of this black swan risk. Now, what’s even more shocking to me is not necessarily the major drawdowns which are every 18 years, but the intermediate drawdowns of 30% and 20%, the typical bear markets if you will. Nine times in our history, we have seen stocks fall 30%. That’s basically once every 10 years. Again, I remind you, we’re coming up on 13 years of this bull market run in US equity markets. Does that mean that it’s going to stop next year? Of course not. It could continue on for another couple of years, but it’s getting long in the tooth and we just typically see a lot of cyclicality at some point in the future. 21 times in the past, we’ve seen at least a 20% drawdown in stocks. That’s once every four years. 41 times, we’ve seen a drawdown of at least 15%. That’s once every two years. Now, to be fair, we actually really had one of these drawdowns back at the end of 2018 which just goes to show you that we continue to have these 10% to 15% drawdowns on a regular basis. The 20%, 30%, 50% are more rare, but they’re not rare enough that we should consider them. And then of course, more than 90 times, we’ve had drawdowns of at least 10% which is correction territory which happens generally once every 11 months. It’s just really important that we keep these numbers in the back of our mind especially as we move forward to 2020 just to keep an eye on the risk for our positions and our portfolio moving forward. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys enjoy this, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why every 18 years on average, investors lose half of their money. As we kind of wrap up 2019 and we start getting towards 2020, a brand-new decade, I think it’s important that we just remind ourselves of just how volatile markets can be moving forward in the future and how good we’ve really had it over the last 13 years as far as volatility, market shocks and black swans are concerned. We really haven’t had any major market movements in the last 13 years for US markets and that is a rare thing. And so, that would lead me to believe that in the future, potentially even the near future, the next couple of years, two years, three years or so, we’re going to have a significant move in the market in one fashion or another. And so, I want to revisit some of the things that we talked about actually in our weekly podcast show number 15 which is a really, really long time ago, we started looking at market drawdowns and crashes and started to build some numbers and some data points, some references around how often and how big market moves actually happen. And the first one is that on average, every 18 years, investors lose half of their money. Now, 18 years is a long time, but a 50% drawdown every 20 years or so is a significant move and in many cases, can set you back considerably towards your financial goals. And so, my goal is to of course, avoid situations like this. This is exactly why we started implementing a more aggressive VIX hedge strategy just in the last couple of months because we’re coming up on 13 years here of no major market volatility and I am more than willing to pay a little bit of money to hedge some of this black swan risk. Now, what’s even more shocking to me is not necessarily the major drawdowns which are every 18 years, but the intermediate drawdowns of 30% and 20%, the typical bear markets if you will. Nine times in our history, we have seen stocks fall 30%. That’s basically once every 10 years. Again, I remind you, we’re coming up on 13 years of this bull market run in US equity markets. Does that mean that it’s going to stop next year? Of course not. It could continue on for another couple of years, but it’s getting long in the tooth and we just typically see a lot of cyclicality at some point in the future. 21 times in the past, we’ve seen at least a 20% drawdown in stocks. That’s once every four years. 41 times, we’ve seen a drawdown of at least 15%. That’s once every two years. Now, to be fair, we actually really had one of these drawdowns back at the end of 2018 which just goes to show you that we continue to have these 10% to 15% drawdowns on a regular basis. The 20%, 30%, 50% are more rare, but they’re not rare enough that we should consider them. And then of course, more than 90 times, we’ve had drawdowns of at least 10% which is correction territory which happens generally once every 11 months. It’s just really important that we keep these numbers in the back of our mind especially as we move forward to 2020 just to keep an eye on the risk for our positions and our portfolio moving forward. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys enjoy this, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#799 - Every 18 Years On Average Investors Lose Half Of Their Money

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be answering the question, “How is the CBOE VIX calculated?” The VIX is actually a measure of 30-day expected volatility for the S&P 500. You could basically say that the VIX is a gauge for judging the implied or the expected movement in the S&P 500 over the next 30 days. And so, what they do is they have a bunch of formulas and ways that they do it which they have on their site, but it basically boils down to looking at at the money and out of the money puts and calls that are more than 23 days from expiration and less than 37 days from expiration for the SPX. And so, what they do is they take all of the AM settlement SPX options along with any PM settlement weekly options that expire and they basically weight this to somewhere around 30 days of expected volatility. And so, what happens is that each week, the contracts and the calculations roll to the next maturity. As one week falls off, then they start accumulating the pricing of the options at the next week. And so, it’s this constant moving target that basically is trying to judge or calculate how much people expect market to move in the next 30 days. Now, again, just keep in mind that the VIX is a judge of just market implied volatility for the SPX. It is not based on the RUT or the Dow or any other securities. It’s not based on any tech stocks necessarily unless they’re included in the S&P. It’s basically a broad market expectation of where implied volatility is going to go in the future. And so, that’s basically how they do it. Again, you can look at the details of the calculations, all of formulas. CBOE does a really good job of detailing this in a white paper. You can just search VIX calculation. But again, what they’re basically doing is just taking a weighted measurement of at the money and out of the money calls and puts no more than 23 days and less than 37 days from expiration for SPX. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be answering the question, “How is the CBOE VIX calculated?” The VIX is actually a measure of 30-day expected volatility for the S&P 500. You could basically say that the VIX is a gauge for judging the implied or the expected movement in the S&P 500 over the next 30 days. And so, what they do is they have a bunch of formulas and ways that they do it which they have on their site, but it basically boils down to looking at at the money and out of the money puts and calls that are more than 23 days from expiration and less than 37 days from expiration for the SPX. And so, what they do is they take all of the AM settlement SPX options along with any PM settlement weekly options that expire and they basically weight this to somewhere around 30 days of expected volatility. And so, what happens is that each week, the contracts and the calculations roll to the next maturity. As one week falls off, then they start accumulating the pricing of the options at the next week. And so, it’s this constant moving target that basically is trying to judge or calculate how much people expect market to move in the next 30 days. Now, again, just keep in mind that the VIX is a judge of just market implied volatility for the SPX. It is not based on the RUT or the Dow or any other securities. It’s not based on any tech stocks necessarily unless they’re included in the S&P. It’s basically a broad market expectation of where implied volatility is going to go in the future. And so, that’s basically how they do it. Again, you can look at the details of the calculations, all of formulas. CBOE does a really good job of detailing this in a white paper. You can just search VIX calculation. But again, what they’re basically doing is just taking a weighted measurement of at the money and out of the money calls and puts no more than 23 days and less than 37 days from expiration for SPX. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#798 - How Is The CBOE VIX Calculated?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Can I buy VIX stock?” No. You cannot buy VIX stock itself. It’s actually not anything that you can trade. It’s not an ETF. It’s not an underlying stock security. The VIX is an index, but you can trade options on it and you can trade derivative products that are based on the VIX. One of the derivative products that’s very popular to trade is VXX which is an ETN that tracks the rolling 30-day level of the VIX futures contracts. The problem with a lot of these is that sometimes they have little bit different pricing structures which you’ll want to investigate and learn more about. You can do that right here at Option Alpha as well. But you can’t buy the VIX directly. You can trade options on it. You can trade the VIX futures. You can trade VIX derivative products if you want. You just can’t go out and buy VIX itself. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Can I buy VIX stock?” No. You cannot buy VIX stock itself. It’s actually not anything that you can trade. It’s not an ETF. It’s not an underlying stock security. The VIX is an index, but you can trade options on it and you can trade derivative products that are based on the VIX. One of the derivative products that’s very popular to trade is VXX which is an ETN that tracks the rolling 30-day level of the VIX futures contracts. The problem with a lot of these is that sometimes they have little bit different pricing structures which you’ll want to investigate and learn more about. You can do that right here at Option Alpha as well. But you can’t buy the VIX directly. You can trade options on it. You can trade the VIX futures. You can trade VIX derivative products if you want. You just can’t go out and buy VIX itself. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#797 - Can I Buy VIX Stock?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Why is back-testing important?” I actually get a lot of pushback on this and I think that many people look at back-testing as irrelevant and I think that back-testing has a lot of relevance if you use it correctly. Sure, back-testing is not perfect in the sense that a perfect back-test is not going to be the perfect expectation of what we should expect moving forward in the future. Obviously, what happened historically is not going to happen the same way in the future. We should all know this. This is a rational logical thought process that we should follow. But a lot of people think that when we say that something is going to back-test and win 70% of the time that it will exactly win 70% of the time in the future. We know this is not the case, that the future is still out there, it is unknowable, it is unpredictable, but for me, back-testing gives us parameters, bumper lanes if you will from which we should start to develop a guidepost to work towards. Now, does this mean that we have a back-tested strategy that we will exactly use just like that moving forward in the future? Definitely not because in some cases, we see that one particular back-test might just randomly be at a time period where it’s got a lot of high profitable trades. And so, it could be at the top of a peak in a series of peaks and valleys. What we look for in back-testing is we look for congruency and for clustering of performance around different metrics. And so, again, this gives us an idea or a frame of reference on guidepost, on rails, on bumper lanes, whatever you want to call it, so that we stay out of the sand traps on either side. If I know in back-testing that generally, 30 days performs better than 50 days, okay, great, that gives me a guidepost to say that we should generally enter trades around 30 days and 60 days, but maybe try to scale back the entry at 50 days. Does that mean that 50 days doesn’t work? No. It just means that 30 days or 60-day entry periods might work a little bit better and that might be on a wide breath of different strategies and ticker symbols and different expiration contracts and puts and calls and short strangles and straddles. We might see this clustering or this congruence of performance metrics around that type of data point. To me, that’s the value of back-testing. It’s getting you out of those very easy to fall in sand traps on either side of your hopefully trajectory on where you’re going with your portfolio. Well, a very easy sand trap that a lot of people fall into is short Delta short expiration periods and long calls and long puts, trading these very cheap, very close to expiration, a week or two out from expiration long calls and long puts, little lottery tickets and it’s a very easy sand trap to fall into because we know from a lot of testing that they just flat out do not work. There’s no rhyme or reason necessarily as to why they don’t work. They just don’t. In any market environment, in any time period, most of the durations in Deltas that we’ve tested in profit-taking levels or stop loss levels, they just don’t work as well as something else. That alleviates that need to find something in that little small needle in a haystack of things that work. Instead, I would rather just play in a different pool, in a different arena of things that generally work. Am I going to pick the ultimate strategy moving forward in the future? I probably doubt it because I don’t know what the future is going to bring. But can I drive on the right side of the road? Can I be in the right lane? Can I be working towards the right guidepost? I think that’s where back-testing definitely has its value. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Why is back-testing important?” I actually get a lot of pushback on this and I think that many people look at back-testing as irrelevant and I think that back-testing has a lot of relevance if you use it correctly. Sure, back-testing is not perfect in the sense that a perfect back-test is not going to be the perfect expectation of what we should expect moving forward in the future. Obviously, what happened historically is not going to happen the same way in the future. We should all know this. This is a rational logical thought process that we should follow. But a lot of people think that when we say that something is going to back-test and win 70% of the time that it will exactly win 70% of the time in the future. We know this is not the case, that the future is still out there, it is unknowable, it is unpredictable, but for me, back-testing gives us parameters, bumper lanes if you will from which we should start to develop a guidepost to work towards. Now, does this mean that we have a back-tested strategy that we will exactly use just like that moving forward in the future? Definitely not because in some cases, we see that one particular back-test might just randomly be at a time period where it’s got a lot of high profitable trades. And so, it could be at the top of a peak in a series of peaks and valleys. What we look for in back-testing is we look for congruency and for clustering of performance around different metrics. And so, again, this gives us an idea or a frame of reference on guidepost, on rails, on bumper lanes, whatever you want to call it, so that we stay out of the sand traps on either side. If I know in back-testing that generally, 30 days performs better than 50 days, okay, great, that gives me a guidepost to say that we should generally enter trades around 30 days and 60 days, but maybe try to scale back the entry at 50 days. Does that mean that 50 days doesn’t work? No. It just means that 30 days or 60-day entry periods might work a little bit better and that might be on a wide breath of different strategies and ticker symbols and different expiration contracts and puts and calls and short strangles and straddles. We might see this clustering or this congruence of performance metrics around that type of data point. To me, that’s the value of back-testing. It’s getting you out of those very easy to fall in sand traps on either side of your hopefully trajectory on where you’re going with your portfolio. Well, a very easy sand trap that a lot of people fall into is short Delta short expiration periods and long calls and long puts, trading these very cheap, very close to expiration, a week or two out from expiration long calls and long puts, little lottery tickets and it’s a very easy sand trap to fall into because we know from a lot of testing that they just flat out do not work. There’s no rhyme or reason necessarily as to why they don’t work. They just don’t. In any market environment, in any time period, most of the durations in Deltas that we’ve tested in profit-taking levels or stop loss levels, they just don’t work as well as something else. That alleviates that need to find something in that little small needle in a haystack of things that work. Instead, I would rather just play in a different pool, in a different arena of things that generally work. Am I going to pick the ultimate strategy moving forward in the future? I probably doubt it because I don’t know what the future is going to bring. But can I drive on the right side of the road? Can I be in the right lane? Can I be working towards the right guidepost? I think that’s where back-testing definitely has its value. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#796 - Why Is Backtesting Important?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about a very hot topic which is, “Do you allocate everything now in lump sum or do you allocate over time if you’re just getting started in investing?” The good news here is that I think that a lot of data and research has already been done on this and in particular, Vanguard did a bunch of research on this which you can find online on Vanguard’s website that has the performance of lump sum investing versus some deviation of dollar cost averaging or systematic investing in the future, basically this idea that if you have this lump sum of cash that you’re going to invest in the market, do you do it all just now and throw it into a diversified portfolio or however you build your portfolio with options or do you dollar cost average into this over time and start to average down in the market or wait for a market fall or a better entry? And what they found and what a lot of people have also found is that generally, the lump sum investment does better. And the simple explanation is that when you get the money invested sooner, it has longer time periods to compound, so that just even small holding period that you are waiting to invest is loss opportunity. At the same time, what it also alleviates is this stress that you’re going to feel in the future when you start to go into your investment cycles. If you say, “I’m going to invest at the end of every year.” when you come around to that yearly investment that you would have to make, you start to run into friction with yourself because you think to yourself, “Things have changed.” or “Now it’s different.” or “Maybe the market will fall even further because it already has rallied so high.” or “Maybe the market’s falling and it might fall even further because it’s already fallen.” Whatever the case is, you start to basically roadblock yourself into making systematic mechanical decisions, so for that reason, lump sum investment is better. I think when it comes to options trading, this makes it insanely more easy because when you start investing with options, not only do you have defined risk, defined profit, defined expectations which is unlike say a bond or stock portfolio which has a lot of downside risk, you carry a lot of market systematic risk in general market portfolios that are 60/40 bonds or 50/50 bonds and stocks, with options, you have the ability to cover and manage risk from the start and you have the ability to adjust where your portfolio is on a monthly or bimonthly basis. The reason I think that this works so well for options is because if you were to invest say all of your money into an options trading strategy and build out an entire portfolio of trades, if the market changes next month, because your options contracts that you’re trading are 30 or 60 days out, you have the ability to quickly readjust and re-center the portfolio over the new market price. That doesn’t happen with a regular stock or bond portfolio. If you invested now and the market is really, really high on a PE basis or on a valuation basis and the market goes down, you don’t have the ability to close those positions and readjust those positions lower. You’re basically going to take a loss all the way down. With options trading, you have the ability to adjust and systematically move with the market every single month. It’s really like getting both sides of this thing at the same time. You have the ability to lump sum, but you also have the ability with options trading to systematically dollar cost average or move your portfolio around where the market is trading. The market goes down, you move your portfolio down just by the sheer activity of entering new positions for the next month. The market goes up, you readjust your positions higher as you enter new positions for the month. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about a very hot topic which is, “Do you allocate everything now in lump sum or do you allocate over time if you’re just getting started in investing?” The good news here is that I think that a lot of data and research has already been done on this and in particular, Vanguard did a bunch of research on this which you can find online on Vanguard’s website that has the performance of lump sum investing versus some deviation of dollar cost averaging or systematic investing in the future, basically this idea that if you have this lump sum of cash that you’re going to invest in the market, do you do it all just now and throw it into a diversified portfolio or however you build your portfolio with options or do you dollar cost average into this over time and start to average down in the market or wait for a market fall or a better entry? And what they found and what a lot of people have also found is that generally, the lump sum investment does better. And the simple explanation is that when you get the money invested sooner, it has longer time periods to compound, so that just even small holding period that you are waiting to invest is loss opportunity. At the same time, what it also alleviates is this stress that you’re going to feel in the future when you start to go into your investment cycles. If you say, “I’m going to invest at the end of every year.” when you come around to that yearly investment that you would have to make, you start to run into friction with yourself because you think to yourself, “Things have changed.” or “Now it’s different.” or “Maybe the market will fall even further because it already has rallied so high.” or “Maybe the market’s falling and it might fall even further because it’s already fallen.” Whatever the case is, you start to basically roadblock yourself into making systematic mechanical decisions, so for that reason, lump sum investment is better. I think when it comes to options trading, this makes it insanely more easy because when you start investing with options, not only do you have defined risk, defined profit, defined expectations which is unlike say a bond or stock portfolio which has a lot of downside risk, you carry a lot of market systematic risk in general market portfolios that are 60/40 bonds or 50/50 bonds and stocks, with options, you have the ability to cover and manage risk from the start and you have the ability to adjust where your portfolio is on a monthly or bimonthly basis. The reason I think that this works so well for options is because if you were to invest say all of your money into an options trading strategy and build out an entire portfolio of trades, if the market changes next month, because your options contracts that you’re trading are 30 or 60 days out, you have the ability to quickly readjust and re-center the portfolio over the new market price. That doesn’t happen with a regular stock or bond portfolio. If you invested now and the market is really, really high on a PE basis or on a valuation basis and the market goes down, you don’t have the ability to close those positions and readjust those positions lower. You’re basically going to take a loss all the way down. With options trading, you have the ability to adjust and systematically move with the market every single month. It’s really like getting both sides of this thing at the same time. You have the ability to lump sum, but you also have the ability with options trading to systematically dollar cost average or move your portfolio around where the market is trading. The market goes down, you move your portfolio down just by the sheer activity of entering new positions for the next month. The market goes up, you readjust your positions higher as you enter new positions for the month. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#795 - Just Started Investing? Allocate Everything Now Or Over-Time

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Is VIX actually implied volatility?” The simple answer to this question is yes, it’s implied volatility, but only for the S&P 500. The VIX itself is basically derived off of the expected future S&P 500 move and the S&P 500 index options over the next 30 days. You could look at VIX as actually the implied volatility reading on the S&P 500. Now, people use the VIX as a broad barometer for market fear or market volatility because the S&P 500 ends up being one of the benchmarks that everyone uses. As a result, when we talk about having high general market volatility, we’re usually referring to either a high or low VIX level as an indication of where implied volatility is in the market. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let us know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Is VIX actually implied volatility?” The simple answer to this question is yes, it’s implied volatility, but only for the S&P 500. The VIX itself is basically derived off of the expected future S&P 500 move and the S&P 500 index options over the next 30 days. You could look at VIX as actually the implied volatility reading on the S&P 500. Now, people use the VIX as a broad barometer for market fear or market volatility because the S&P 500 ends up being one of the benchmarks that everyone uses. As a result, when we talk about having high general market volatility, we’re usually referring to either a high or low VIX level as an indication of where implied volatility is in the market. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let us know and until next time, happy trading.

#794 - Is VIX Actually Implied Volatility?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What makes a stock volatile?” The simple answer to this question is just changes in expectation and when changes and expectation are not in alignment with what people had thought previously, that’s what causes stocks to become volatile. If you really think about how stocks get really volatile particularly around earnings events, it’s only driven by the fact that we have new information that changes our future expectation of where the stock is going to go. And so, if that new information is really good for example for a stock and people have assumed that the stock was going to have a bad year and it turns out, the stock might have a good year, then we see a dramatic change in the stock’s price. We have lots of volatility as market participants re-price the stock into a new territory. The same thing happens in reverse. If a stock’s having a really good year and then we have this new information that comes in, it could be earnings, it could be something else related in the industry, a breaking new story that’s really bad for the security and changes the outlook or the expectation, then the market participants dramatically re-price the stock into a lower territory and that’s where we see really big volatile stock moves. Again, what makes a stock really volatile? It’s just the expectation in the market. And so, if you have a company that’s new or just started up or that’s starting to gain market share or lose market share and all of this is happening very fast and the company is changing dynamically very fast, the stock naturally is going to be more volatile. The one right now that I think of all the time is Tesla because Tesla recently went through almost a 50% drawdown this summer and almost a 30% rebound since then and the company is really volatile because the company is still very much a new company. It’s very much a startup company that’s developing its brand and starting to get exposure and mass-market appeal and so, as a result, its earnings are fluctuating pretty quickly and so, as expectations in Tesla change, so does the stock price pretty violently. Compare this to something more stable like the S&P or IWM which is the Russell 2000, it’s not going to change that much because all of the components are not really that heavily weighted, so as a result, small changes in the components really don’t change the major indexes that much as far as expectations go. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What makes a stock volatile?” The simple answer to this question is just changes in expectation and when changes and expectation are not in alignment with what people had thought previously, that’s what causes stocks to become volatile. If you really think about how stocks get really volatile particularly around earnings events, it’s only driven by the fact that we have new information that changes our future expectation of where the stock is going to go. And so, if that new information is really good for example for a stock and people have assumed that the stock was going to have a bad year and it turns out, the stock might have a good year, then we see a dramatic change in the stock’s price. We have lots of volatility as market participants re-price the stock into a new territory. The same thing happens in reverse. If a stock’s having a really good year and then we have this new information that comes in, it could be earnings, it could be something else related in the industry, a breaking new story that’s really bad for the security and changes the outlook or the expectation, then the market participants dramatically re-price the stock into a lower territory and that’s where we see really big volatile stock moves. Again, what makes a stock really volatile? It’s just the expectation in the market. And so, if you have a company that’s new or just started up or that’s starting to gain market share or lose market share and all of this is happening very fast and the company is changing dynamically very fast, the stock naturally is going to be more volatile. The one right now that I think of all the time is Tesla because Tesla recently went through almost a 50% drawdown this summer and almost a 30% rebound since then and the company is really volatile because the company is still very much a new company. It’s very much a startup company that’s developing its brand and starting to get exposure and mass-market appeal and so, as a result, its earnings are fluctuating pretty quickly and so, as expectations in Tesla change, so does the stock price pretty violently. Compare this to something more stable like the S&P or IWM which is the Russell 2000, it’s not going to change that much because all of the components are not really that heavily weighted, so as a result, small changes in the components really don’t change the major indexes that much as far as expectations go. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#793 - What Makes A Stock Volatile?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What is implied volatility rank or what’s commonly referred to as IVR?” IVR is way for us to normalize implied volatility readings across different ticker symbols and ETFs to get basically an apples to apples comparison. When we are looking at a trade and we are searching for and scanning for high implied volatility setups, it’s not enough in our particular case to search just for the highest implied volatility securities because high implied volatility for one security could be low implied volatility for another. If I told you that a security’s implied volatility reading was 30%, that has no context whatsoever if I didn’t tell you where 30% laid in its historical range. For a company like Tesla, 30% implied volatility might be insanely low. For a company like ExxonMobil or GE, 30% implied volatility might be insanely high. What we do is we overlay implied volatility ranking to give us a context of where the current implied volatility reading lays in its historical range. For example, if we have one stock that has a historical range in its implied volatility of 1% to 30%, then we know that that range encompasses all of the implied volatility that it’s seen over the last year. And so, if we see a current reading of 15%, we can assume that that reading is in the 50th rank. It’s basically right in the middle of its historical range between 1% and 30%. Now, you take another stock and we see that that other stock has implied volatility that has range between 15% and 45%. Now, on the outside, you could definitely make the case that this stock has higher volatility than the first stock. However, if we see that the reading on the second stock for its implied volatility is 30%, we again, see that the reading is right at the 50th rank. Using IVR, we’ve now neutralized and put both of these stocks on the same metric and playing field which is ranking its implied volatility against itself over the last year and we see that both stocks are actually middle of the range for their implied volatility. No stock is necessarily more volatile or less volatile than the other and option pricing should reflect this. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let us know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What is implied volatility rank or what’s commonly referred to as IVR?” IVR is way for us to normalize implied volatility readings across different ticker symbols and ETFs to get basically an apples to apples comparison. When we are looking at a trade and we are searching for and scanning for high implied volatility setups, it’s not enough in our particular case to search just for the highest implied volatility securities because high implied volatility for one security could be low implied volatility for another. If I told you that a security’s implied volatility reading was 30%, that has no context whatsoever if I didn’t tell you where 30% laid in its historical range. For a company like Tesla, 30% implied volatility might be insanely low. For a company like ExxonMobil or GE, 30% implied volatility might be insanely high. What we do is we overlay implied volatility ranking to give us a context of where the current implied volatility reading lays in its historical range. For example, if we have one stock that has a historical range in its implied volatility of 1% to 30%, then we know that that range encompasses all of the implied volatility that it’s seen over the last year. And so, if we see a current reading of 15%, we can assume that that reading is in the 50th rank. It’s basically right in the middle of its historical range between 1% and 30%. Now, you take another stock and we see that that other stock has implied volatility that has range between 15% and 45%. Now, on the outside, you could definitely make the case that this stock has higher volatility than the first stock. However, if we see that the reading on the second stock for its implied volatility is 30%, we again, see that the reading is right at the 50th rank. Using IVR, we’ve now neutralized and put both of these stocks on the same metric and playing field which is ranking its implied volatility against itself over the last year and we see that both stocks are actually middle of the range for their implied volatility. No stock is necessarily more volatile or less volatile than the other and option pricing should reflect this. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let us know and until next time, happy trading.

#792 - What Is Implied Volatility Rank (IVR)?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Is TD Ameritrade’s Thinkorswim free?” The short answer is that yes, the platform is free to investors and traders. However, if you do want to have options trading privileges and get the ability to trade on margin, usually, they require a $2,000 deposit. Now, this is the time of this recording, so it may be different in the future and always check TD Ameritrade’s page and their website to see if that deposit requirement has been lowered or increased in the future. But the platform itself is free. They don’t charge any platform fees. As long as you’re a customer and you have a funded account, you can actually start trading and using the platform. I think it’s a great platform not only because I’ve used it for the last 10 plus years, but also because I truly think it’s one of the better platforms out there. Not every broker platform is perfect. There’s always different features and things that I like on other broker platforms and other technology that’s not wrapped up in Thinkorswim, but as far as options trading is concerned, I think right now, it’s currently the best platform that’s out there in the market. As always, if you guys have any questions, let us know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Is TD Ameritrade’s Thinkorswim free?” The short answer is that yes, the platform is free to investors and traders. However, if you do want to have options trading privileges and get the ability to trade on margin, usually, they require a $2,000 deposit. Now, this is the time of this recording, so it may be different in the future and always check TD Ameritrade’s page and their website to see if that deposit requirement has been lowered or increased in the future. But the platform itself is free. They don’t charge any platform fees. As long as you’re a customer and you have a funded account, you can actually start trading and using the platform. I think it’s a great platform not only because I’ve used it for the last 10 plus years, but also because I truly think it’s one of the better platforms out there. Not every broker platform is perfect. There’s always different features and things that I like on other broker platforms and other technology that’s not wrapped up in Thinkorswim, but as far as options trading is concerned, I think right now, it’s currently the best platform that’s out there in the market. As always, if you guys have any questions, let us know and until next time, happy trading.

#791 - Is TD Ameritrade thinkorswim Free?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why you cannot start trading options with $100. Now, I know that there’s a lot of people out there online who suggest that you can start trading options with a little bit of money. And while that’s true, we actually suggest that you start with somewhere around $3,000 to $5,000. Hopefully on the upper end of that range, around $5,000 is really where you start to get the benefits of diversifying positions and adding more ticker symbols and spreading your risk across more underlying asset classes. The real reason why you can’t start trading options with $100 is although you can buy some option contracts with $100 and you can do a very simple, very narrow $1 wide spread, it really doesn’t leave you open to doing much more than that. And so, theoretically, yes, you could trade options with $100. Is it really going to give you the best opportunity to start developing the skills and the strategies required to be successful on options trading? Probably not. Our suggestion is always to save up a little bit more money before you start. It’s better to start with a nice portfolio size, at the very minimum, around a $5,000 portfolio size, so give yourself the best opportunity to be successful. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why you cannot start trading options with $100. Now, I know that there’s a lot of people out there online who suggest that you can start trading options with a little bit of money. And while that’s true, we actually suggest that you start with somewhere around $3,000 to $5,000. Hopefully on the upper end of that range, around $5,000 is really where you start to get the benefits of diversifying positions and adding more ticker symbols and spreading your risk across more underlying asset classes. The real reason why you can’t start trading options with $100 is although you can buy some option contracts with $100 and you can do a very simple, very narrow $1 wide spread, it really doesn’t leave you open to doing much more than that. And so, theoretically, yes, you could trade options with $100. Is it really going to give you the best opportunity to start developing the skills and the strategies required to be successful on options trading? Probably not. Our suggestion is always to save up a little bit more money before you start. It’s better to start with a nice portfolio size, at the very minimum, around a $5,000 portfolio size, so give yourself the best opportunity to be successful. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#790 - Here's Why You Cannot Start Trading Options With $100

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why I believe you should trade on desktop and manage on mobile. I’ve said this a number of times, but actually, I think it’s a really good technique to use because as the brokerage industry continues to evolve and move towards more of a mobile friendly style and platform, I think it’s really important that you still make a lot of your trades on desktop especially if you’re a new trader. I don’t make that many trades on mobile. I like to manage a lot of my trades on my mobile phone using the Thinkorswim app or if you’re using a different broker, you can use their app. I think that managing on mobile is very, very easy. I can watch and monitor positions, enter and reenter GTC or closing orders. But when it comes to actually making trades that are added to the portfolio, I still prefer to do that on desktop and I think that in many cases, desktop allows you to get a better sense of what’s going on broadly speaking with the whole portfolio. This doesn’t mean you can’t do it on mobile. I think that sometimes we just get lost in where the mobile layout is compared to a desktop layout which can give us more real estate if you will, more screen space to look at more numbers very, very quickly. In my opinion, I think when you’re moving forward, it’s probably a pretty good idea if you can, to trade your positions on desktop, enter your orders for opening positions, adjusting positions, etcetera and then manage any existing positions on mobile. Use mobile as a means to get away from your desktop during the day and just to monitor positions as needed. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why I believe you should trade on desktop and manage on mobile. I’ve said this a number of times, but actually, I think it’s a really good technique to use because as the brokerage industry continues to evolve and move towards more of a mobile friendly style and platform, I think it’s really important that you still make a lot of your trades on desktop especially if you’re a new trader. I don’t make that many trades on mobile. I like to manage a lot of my trades on my mobile phone using the Thinkorswim app or if you’re using a different broker, you can use their app. I think that managing on mobile is very, very easy. I can watch and monitor positions, enter and reenter GTC or closing orders. But when it comes to actually making trades that are added to the portfolio, I still prefer to do that on desktop and I think that in many cases, desktop allows you to get a better sense of what’s going on broadly speaking with the whole portfolio. This doesn’t mean you can’t do it on mobile. I think that sometimes we just get lost in where the mobile layout is compared to a desktop layout which can give us more real estate if you will, more screen space to look at more numbers very, very quickly. In my opinion, I think when you’re moving forward, it’s probably a pretty good idea if you can, to trade your positions on desktop, enter your orders for opening positions, adjusting positions, etcetera and then manage any existing positions on mobile. Use mobile as a means to get away from your desktop during the day and just to monitor positions as needed. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#789 - Trade On Desktop, Manage On Mobile

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What is a good amount of money to start investing?” I think that honestly, you should start investing with whatever you have, so as much money as you can possibly sock away into an investing account or a retirement account, you should start doing that right away. In fact, it’s often been said that the best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago or today. And so, if you haven’t already started investing, then the next best time to start is today, right now. Literally today, start transferring money into a brokerage account, into a retirement account and start putting your money to work because we know that the power of compounding works in our favor the longer that we have that money invested in compounding. When it comes to trading and specifically, trading options, we do believe that you should have at least $5,000 to start. And we say $5,000 not because we just pulled randomly this number out of thin air, but because if you were to start with less than $5,000, theoretically, you could start trading options. You could buy an option strategy. You could sell an option strategy for less than $5,000. But at $5,000 of account size, it starts to magically convert into the appropriate risk size and position sizing that we would need or we suggest here at Option Alpha to appropriately manage risk in the future. At $5,000, it leaves you ample room to leave some cash in reserve and also take whatever is left out of that cash reserve for trading and have enough cash available to diversify into an uncorrelated basket of tickers and all into an option selling strategy that’s overall market neutral. And so, that really starts to happen on a much better level where the numbers really start to work out, around $5,000. Could you do it with $3,000? Yeah, but then you start to get into position sizes that are more than 5% of your account and that really leaves you exposed to a lot of additional risk and a lot of sequencing risk that might otherwise derail your probability of success moving forward. Again, a good amount of money to start in my opinion is around $5,000 for options trading. If you’re starting with less than that, you can start buying into indexes or into short-term bond funds, basically anything that helps generate a little bit of extra return in revenue in your account as you start to save up and start to fund your investing account to get to that $5,000 level. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What is a good amount of money to start investing?” I think that honestly, you should start investing with whatever you have, so as much money as you can possibly sock away into an investing account or a retirement account, you should start doing that right away. In fact, it’s often been said that the best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago or today. And so, if you haven’t already started investing, then the next best time to start is today, right now. Literally today, start transferring money into a brokerage account, into a retirement account and start putting your money to work because we know that the power of compounding works in our favor the longer that we have that money invested in compounding. When it comes to trading and specifically, trading options, we do believe that you should have at least $5,000 to start. And we say $5,000 not because we just pulled randomly this number out of thin air, but because if you were to start with less than $5,000, theoretically, you could start trading options. You could buy an option strategy. You could sell an option strategy for less than $5,000. But at $5,000 of account size, it starts to magically convert into the appropriate risk size and position sizing that we would need or we suggest here at Option Alpha to appropriately manage risk in the future. At $5,000, it leaves you ample room to leave some cash in reserve and also take whatever is left out of that cash reserve for trading and have enough cash available to diversify into an uncorrelated basket of tickers and all into an option selling strategy that’s overall market neutral. And so, that really starts to happen on a much better level where the numbers really start to work out, around $5,000. Could you do it with $3,000? Yeah, but then you start to get into position sizes that are more than 5% of your account and that really leaves you exposed to a lot of additional risk and a lot of sequencing risk that might otherwise derail your probability of success moving forward. Again, a good amount of money to start in my opinion is around $5,000 for options trading. If you’re starting with less than that, you can start buying into indexes or into short-term bond funds, basically anything that helps generate a little bit of extra return in revenue in your account as you start to save up and start to fund your investing account to get to that $5,000 level. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#788 - What Is A Good Amount Of Money To Start Investing?

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why fear comes from a loss of control. This is actually really interesting if you think about it, but we have this really strong primitive desire to control everything in our environment and really, the people and the things that we interact with. We see this all the time in markets because people will pay thousands of dollars for indicator signals and for forecast, for glimmers of hope into what the future might bring. This is why actually, analysts just really hang on this idea of future casting earnings or future pacing growth because everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in the future. If they know what’s going to happen in future or they have a good idea of it, then maybe they can control it or take advantage of it some way. We actually do this in our personal lives all the time in the sense that we always check the weather, right? You will always have an idea of what the weather is going to be maybe five days out or seven days out and this gives you a sense of control because if you can predict potentially what the weather’s going to be, you have this desire to control the situation and make sure that you’re all ready and available in case it snows or rains or there’s a tornado or a hurricane or whatever the case is. But in both the markets and in the weather, we know that even though we might have an idea, maybe an inkling of where things are going to go, we still don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out. The best forecast in the market have turned out to be in many cases, sometimes completely wrong. The best weather forecast as to where a storm or a hurricane or a snowstorm might hit turns out to be completely wrong as well. And so, we know that we can’t control these situations which creates a lot of anxiety and so, what we fear is this loss of control and it’s actually nothing mental. If you really think about it, fear has nothing to do with anything mental that manifest in your body. It’s all physical. We know that if we slow down that the weather changing and going from snow to rain or rain to snow really doesn’t change you. It doesn’t really impact your life really one way or another. Does it change maybe what you wear one day or where you drive or how long it takes to you to get to work? Sure, but is it really going to impact your life? But for some reason, we fear this anxiety that we have physical harm that’s going to come to us from having a loss of control and the physical harm doesn’t have to be that you’re going to die or get hit or be in a car crash. It could be just losing a family member. It could be losing relationships because of some event that happened. Oftentimes actually, people are really fearful in trading because they’re quiet and they’re very subdued in their trading activities. They don’t really share it with anybody. They don’t really talk about it because what they fear is not necessarily that people will ask some questions or that they will be inquisitive, but they fear is they fear a loss of relationships, that if they look and act like something different out of the norm that they might lose relationships that they really care about. And so, it’s this loss of control that develops fear around trading. “I don’t want to look stupid. I don’t want to look dumb. I don’t want to look like I did something and lost money and now, I look like an idiot and I lose my relationship with my wife or friends or family or kids or whatever the case is.” The key message today is just to understand that fear has nothing to do with anything that manifests mentally. It’s all actually just a physical reaction to this loss of control that we are feeling in our body. We’re losing control. We’re developing anxiety. We’re developing an awareness that we might be disconnected from other people or other situations or relationships or things that we enjoy. And so, this is really where it comes from. If you can learn to overcome this and learn to control this, then the sky is the limit for you because you can basically take fear out of the equation and you can live more freely, trade more freely, invest more freely. One of the ways that I’ve been doing it in my life and trying to work around this as well is I’ve been not checking the weather. I don’t check the weather now moving forward. In fact, I often hear from somebody, “Hey, it’s supposed to rain today.” And I just learn through the fact that other people are telling me. But I don’t check the weather. I know what season it is. I know what time of year it is. We’re getting into the holidays obviously. It’s getting colder in Pennsylvania. We’ve had some snow. I’m aware of that, but I’m not checking the weather anymore. I don’t know if tomorrow’s going to be a blizzard snowstorm. I don’t know if it’s going to come in a week. And so, this is a way for me to control this fear that I have of understanding what the weather is going to be even as small as this and I can then now dovetail this into other areas of my life. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why fear comes from a loss of control. This is actually really interesting if you think about it, but we have this really strong primitive desire to control everything in our environment and really, the people and the things that we interact with. We see this all the time in markets because people will pay thousands of dollars for indicator signals and for forecast, for glimmers of hope into what the future might bring. This is why actually, analysts just really hang on this idea of future casting earnings or future pacing growth because everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in the future. If they know what’s going to happen in future or they have a good idea of it, then maybe they can control it or take advantage of it some way. We actually do this in our personal lives all the time in the sense that we always check the weather, right? You will always have an idea of what the weather is going to be maybe five days out or seven days out and this gives you a sense of control because if you can predict potentially what the weather’s going to be, you have this desire to control the situation and make sure that you’re all ready and available in case it snows or rains or there’s a tornado or a hurricane or whatever the case is. But in both the markets and in the weather, we know that even though we might have an idea, maybe an inkling of where things are going to go, we still don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out. The best forecast in the market have turned out to be in many cases, sometimes completely wrong. The best weather forecast as to where a storm or a hurricane or a snowstorm might hit turns out to be completely wrong as well. And so, we know that we can’t control these situations which creates a lot of anxiety and so, what we fear is this loss of control and it’s actually nothing mental. If you really think about it, fear has nothing to do with anything mental that manifest in your body. It’s all physical. We know that if we slow down that the weather changing and going from snow to rain or rain to snow really doesn’t change you. It doesn’t really impact your life really one way or another. Does it change maybe what you wear one day or where you drive or how long it takes to you to get to work? Sure, but is it really going to impact your life? But for some reason, we fear this anxiety that we have physical harm that’s going to come to us from having a loss of control and the physical harm doesn’t have to be that you’re going to die or get hit or be in a car crash. It could be just losing a family member. It could be losing relationships because of some event that happened. Oftentimes actually, people are really fearful in trading because they’re quiet and they’re very subdued in their trading activities. They don’t really share it with anybody. They don’t really talk about it because what they fear is not necessarily that people will ask some questions or that they will be inquisitive, but they fear is they fear a loss of relationships, that if they look and act like something different out of the norm that they might lose relationships that they really care about. And so, it’s this loss of control that develops fear around trading. “I don’t want to look stupid. I don’t want to look dumb. I don’t want to look like I did something and lost money and now, I look like an idiot and I lose my relationship with my wife or friends or family or kids or whatever the case is.” The key message today is just to understand that fear has nothing to do with anything that manifests mentally. It’s all actually just a physical reaction to this loss of control that we are feeling in our body. We’re losing control. We’re developing anxiety. We’re developing an awareness that we might be disconnected from other people or other situations or relationships or things that we enjoy. And so, this is really where it comes from. If you can learn to overcome this and learn to control this, then the sky is the limit for you because you can basically take fear out of the equation and you can live more freely, trade more freely, invest more freely. One of the ways that I’ve been doing it in my life and trying to work around this as well is I’ve been not checking the weather. I don’t check the weather now moving forward. In fact, I often hear from somebody, “Hey, it’s supposed to rain today.” And I just learn through the fact that other people are telling me. But I don’t check the weather. I know what season it is. I know what time of year it is. We’re getting into the holidays obviously. It’s getting colder in Pennsylvania. We’ve had some snow. I’m aware of that, but I’m not checking the weather anymore. I don’t know if tomorrow’s going to be a blizzard snowstorm. I don’t know if it’s going to come in a week. And so, this is a way for me to control this fear that I have of understanding what the weather is going to be even as small as this and I can then now dovetail this into other areas of my life. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#787 - Fear Comes From A Loss Of Control

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What is long volatility?” Long volatility can just be described as an options trading strategy or a trading strategy in general that profits from an increase in volatility. When someone says that they’re long volatility, that basically just means that they’ve bought into a volatility product that would profit if implied volatility in the underlying shares or the general market goes up in volatility. If I’m in a long volatility strategy that could be a long strangle, long straddle, it could be long calls, long puts as single option contract trades, these trades all profit from an increase in volatility in the market. One of our favorite long volatility strategies is to use a VIX hedging strategy whereby we use a couple of combinations of contracts to go long the VIX and that helps with our positions because we give ourselves some long volatility exposure in case we get into a black swan or into a really volatile environment where the market goes down pretty quickly. Again, long volatility just means that you’re in a strategy, in a position which would profit from an increase in market volatility. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the market has to go down for volatility to increase. We do see sometimes that markets going up or positions going up also is accompanied by an increase in volatility, so all that it means is that you’re just profiting from an increase in a higher implied volatility in the future. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to answer the question, “What is long volatility?” Long volatility can just be described as an options trading strategy or a trading strategy in general that profits from an increase in volatility. When someone says that they’re long volatility, that basically just means that they’ve bought into a volatility product that would profit if implied volatility in the underlying shares or the general market goes up in volatility. If I’m in a long volatility strategy that could be a long strangle, long straddle, it could be long calls, long puts as single option contract trades, these trades all profit from an increase in volatility in the market. One of our favorite long volatility strategies is to use a VIX hedging strategy whereby we use a couple of combinations of contracts to go long the VIX and that helps with our positions because we give ourselves some long volatility exposure in case we get into a black swan or into a really volatile environment where the market goes down pretty quickly. Again, long volatility just means that you’re in a strategy, in a position which would profit from an increase in market volatility. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the market has to go down for volatility to increase. We do see sometimes that markets going up or positions going up also is accompanied by an increase in volatility, so all that it means is that you’re just profiting from an increase in a higher implied volatility in the future. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.

#786 - What Is Long Volatility?

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