Signs of volatility slowly slipping into the market. The overall market continues its sideways move as it has over the last 2 weeks. Tonight let's look at a few canaries in the coal mine and a trade set up...
Even if you think bad news is good news because the Fed will start another round of QE the risk continues to be to the downside. I've made my entire trading career around selling volatility and collecting premium. I have never seen volatility this low. With all the risks out there in the market you
After hours today AMZN GOOGL reported earnings. Both companies beat their expectations and have moved close to 1 standard deviation to the upside. As we have talked about if you look at earnings trades over 1000s of occurrences there is no statistical edge in Iron Condor trades. However, there is an
Earnings season in full force as stocks like Facebook rockets higher based on earnings news. There was little news from the Fed announcement today. The market has become sensitized to the veiled threats of increasing rates. If we look at the Fed watch tool we can say market is expecting a low probab
Index products are converging with one another and this yet another example that we are about to enter into a period of extreme volatility. Let's take a look at historical volatility over the last 20 years. Notice that all of the "all time highs" in the last 20 years also had just entered a phase
It's earnings season and we kick off with the grand daddy of them all - AAPL! Many think that around earnings you should only sell premium. That is plain old stupid advice given by those that don't know any better. Let me tell you right now that trading earnings is not a bathrobe. One size
Earnings season has kicked into high gear. How do you know whether or not to sell premium on high implied volatility stocks going into the earnings announcement? The trading technology out there focuses only on theoretical probabilities. However, what if you looked the actual historical probabilitie
There are two types of market that we have seen over the last several years. They have been either quiet and trending or sideways and volatile. It seems to me that markets may have broken out in another quiet and trending market. With volatility we like to use a combination of calendar spreads and d
It's not a rally, it's just a slow grind to the upside on very light volume. One interesting stat that came out today that the last 3 weeks saw the fastest collapse in the VIX in its history. There are plenty of contrarian candidates out there to choose from. Tonight let's set up a trade
