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If brokers see these tables I can hear them all saying "look, you can get almost the same ROI with covered spreads and get the protection in case of a huge price drop." While in their heads they are saying, "and I get double commissions!!!!"
I am hoping to get option prices on flash crash day to do research to see if the spreads helped on that big down day. As you saw in my table from last fall the spreads didn't help much at all.
Anybody have ES option settlements for 5/5/10 & 5/6/10? QST doesn't go back that far for options.
Selling calls in ES is a horrible waste of money because the sky high margin will force you to trade way less positions and thus you will have way less profit at the end of the year. Or you will be fat too close to ITM and have high risk. Plus the "protection" it gives you is small.
Selling both sides in other commodities just for "protection" and not because fundamentals say the market is in balance when we are selling far OTM doesn't give you much "protection" because of the small premiums.
"Predicting the move" is rarely done consistently.
"Predicting the move" I definitely agree; for me it would be more of "protecting against the move" Especially during volatile periods 08-10, because when the move comes it usually wipes out the option sellers that are margined to the hilt. I rarely use margin, but I can point to 4 or 5 instances where selling calls save me massive losses.
I ran a real life backtest of my new ES strategy starting on 1/1/2013. I started with $100,000. I picked an ES put that was 90+ DTE and as close to 0.0300 delta. I exited the position the day the option settled at 50% or more drop from the price when acquired. The exit price was 50%+ of entry price. I used 7.50 per RT for costs. I entered the next option the day I exited the prior position using the settlement for that day.
In 2013 the strategy made 62.6%. In 2014 it made about 40.2% (it wasn't a full 12 months). In 2015 it was up 25.8% in 4 months.
For the entire time period, 28 months, it made 186.8% for 31 trades. 100% winners. The worst day the margin was using 88.2% of the account balance.
I never would have attempted this research without Dudetooth's SPAN excel spreadsheet.
One question comes to mind is that during this time, ES has generally been in an uptrend. Would it be possible, when you get some time, do a shorter study for a year when market has been a choppy market and also when the market is in some down trend.
Also, it would be beneficial, for a novice like me, if you could add a column, listing the value of the ES, so that we can quickly see, how low your strike prices are.
"The S&P 500 index rallied steadily during 2013 and progressively posted new record highs. The S&P 500 index rallied by 30% in 2013 and extended the sharp recovery rally that began in early 2009. The U.S. stock market during 2013 received a boost from decent U.S. economic and global economic growth and from the Fed's continued aggressive monetary policy involving zero interest rates and its QE3 program.
The stock market rallied in 2013 despite several headwinds for consumers that included (1) $150 billion in higher taxes on January 1 with the end of the 2 percent payroll tax holiday, (2) the $1.2 trillion of automatic spending cuts over 10 years that went into effect on March 1, 2013, resulting in significant across-the-board spending cuts for social and defense spending due to sequester, and (3) a hike in tax rates on joint income above $450,000.
The stock market in 2013 saw support from the Fed's willingness to continue its third quantitative easing program (QE3) involving the purchase of $85 billion per month of Treasury and mortgage securities."