Let's Trade Options

risk reversal, can kicked, gimme some good US econ data prints, Sept ffr hike back in the tweetosphere b4 you know it....TLT to <$110 in a few weeks.....?

lol, round up the short sellers!

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china...DZfMQRzZWMDc3I-

That's my thinking, too with SPY ... . Continuing to think of 213 as the "ya never know" short-term top (don't think we'll get there in the short term, but you never know) for purposes of my short call strikes. Some kind of intermediate lower low needs to form between here and there on the Daily for me to get a little more aggressive to the downside with the call strike prices; it's a bit messy yet ... . To the put side, I'm just letting the probabilities guide me there, but horizontal support has been at 2040 since mid-March and then at 197-8 (the 2015 low). My preference still remains to load to the downside either by skewing my IC's or ratioing the call side to the put side (I'm thinking 3-2 for IC's) (I've been doing the former). There are similar "sweet spots" in DIA/IWM/QQQ ... .

I expect a retreat by TLT, but I'm unsure of how quickly. Quite a bit of press as to how Greece ain't nearly the prob that China is; still a lot of goofiness in that market that has to sort itself out. I've looked at FXI several times over the past several days and watched the Hang Seng gyrate quite a bit but am not comfortable with a play ... . I had a short strangle on in FXI before all this mess played out and had to goof around with it quite a bit with rolls to one side or the other ... . Profitable in the end, but want to keep that kind of thing to a minimum ... .

What exactly does a "malicious" short seller look like?

Trying to fill GREK Aug/Sep $16 calendar for 10c

Got out of the TBT short strangle for and one of the TLT short strangles at 50% max profit (July 17 expiry). Wanted to close them here while I can, since all the air is going out of TLT ... . Still have one TLT short strangle on (July 31 113.5/124) that I'm less concerned about, although price could quickly break the put side the way it's sliding here ... . Just closing out these two 1 contract short strangles has freed up a big chunk of buying power, which is kind of making me reconsider the notion that putting on short strangles is better than IC'd strangles, since there is a balance between max profit of the set up, buying power reduction, and ease of trade management. The BP issue is making me rethink putting on short strangles at all; you sacrifice a bit of max profit by doing IC's, but you keep your BP free to get into other trades, and really the trade management issue is just a bit of laziness on my part; it's just as easy to roll a short vert for duration and credit if you have to as it is to roll a naked short call or put ... . There naturally is the added commission/fee issue with IC's, since you've got more legs ... .

Continuing to sit on my hands here to see what weekend Greek developments bring and how Monday's markets digest it; I'll look at plays in FXE and one of the indices after Monday's New York session ... . I've got a couple of IC's on in FXE, but have been blowing off looking at it for set ups around 45 DTE until the Euro sorts itself out; apparently, it's viewing the situation optimistically ... . EUR/USD up 1.11% today to 1.1154 ... . SPY was up 1.26% to end at 207.47 ... . Would like it higher to add short calls, but it basically never made it convincingly past 208 all week ... .

Not moved to action by any of the Dough trades ... . I glance at Dough because sometimes they see something that I miss or am not focused on ... ; those times are becoming less and less, since I'm primarily focused on just trading SPY/DIA/IWM/QQQ, maybe TLT, and FXE, and a lot of those traders there are in those in some form or other all the time, so their trades aren't news to me. Since the IVR is so high in the indices at the moment, there really isn't any reason for me to be trading something else right now ... . If IVR goes back to below 35 in the indices, I'll naturally have a gander at other stuff; just don't see the point right now ... . These bread and butter trades are boring, but that's how I want trading to be ... a giant schnooze ... .

Me: shoulda, coulda, woulda ... .

sat all day & never filled, puny volume on the Aug $16 calls...oh well, something like it will be there around the bend

de acuerdo

SPY Aug $215/$217 calls gets $0.34 now, but we'll see what happens in the early new week....

really i like it and trying to understand

possible trades for a sharp rebound in china stocks, perhaps enforced at gunpoint

China say, "here, take this money!"

http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...gyholnk0000001
"Chairwoman Peggy Yu Yu and CEO Guoqing Li, who together hold 35.9% of all outstanding shares and 83.5% of the voting power, have offered $7.812 in cash per American depositary share..."

Looking into crystal ball next week ... . Likely that Greece will continue to be a "minor" theme ... . http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...hurdle-to-deal Gonna be tough to make up that "trust deficit" by Sunday ... .

And of course there's always the Janet show, set for later in the week ... .

yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for JY to show a hawk feather....her words b4 Congress are remarkable for taking up a lot of time to say nothing.

If Greece is not over Sunday, then perhaps they keep jawing for another week - or maybe Greece gets the hook, wouldn't that be fun?

China is still big news, too.....We still live in interesting times...

woke up early to read the news as it appeared there is too much bad blood now between Greece and the other EU states to allow an easy slide into a third bailout can kick. So, no resolution and whiffs of true panic may start to blow in from the EU and also China....almost a full day to watch the slow motion train wreck coming down the tracks....

a new deadline for Greece....izzat Tuesday night, Wednesday?....zzzzzz.....idk.....if you miss an episode in this soap opera it makes it hard to figure out who is fcking who, who is having whose baby, whose daddy is not really dead after all these years etc etc...anyway, the "binary event" that never arrives still never arrives, but maybe it will this week, setting up some opps for nice weekly trades...stay tuned...meanwhile, my rather tight Jul SPY IC ($202/$210 shorts) will benefit from some ranging pa...

Janet show is likely to be a rerun of a past episode ... . Since Greek and China are running new episodes, I'm more likely to tune in there ... . The good news is that volatility is likely to stick around for a bit more ... .

BTFD 4ever, /ES gapped down 20, bid up 10, now down <10, let's see what euro Monday brings....I need a gap down to breathe a little easier....

put side time spreads are a better deal than the calls. HYG will keep sliding into a riskoff/rising rate horizon...