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Old 01-24-2012, 10:16 PM   #181
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Some custodians allow at least covered calls in IRAs - this should avoid increasing the complexity of the above.
I don't know if other utrecht strategies (naked put or buy/sell calls) could be easily used inside IRA. Anybody tried?
Good question, thanks. I'm going to have to look into that.

Selling covered calls in an IRA can't possibly be any more painful than getting Fidelity's permission to sell naked puts in a taxable account. At least that's what I hope.
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Old 01-25-2012, 01:08 PM   #182
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I don't know if other utrecht strategies (naked put or buy/sell calls) could be easily used inside IRA. Anybody tried?
You can buy calls/puts or sell covered calls/cash-secured puts in an IRA. No naked options. You can't even do spreads without cash-securing the short put leg or owning the underlying for the short call leg. The guiding principal (as I understand it) is you can't do any trade in an IRA that could potentially require a margin account (i.e. borrowing) to settle the trade.
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Old 01-25-2012, 02:51 PM   #183
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You can buy calls/puts or sell covered calls/cash-secured puts in an IRA. No naked options. You can't even do spreads without cash-securing the short put leg or owning the underlying for the short call leg. The guiding principal (as I understand it) is you can't do any trade in an IRA that could potentially require a margin account (i.e. borrowing) to settle the trade.
Good to know, thanks.

Part of the issue is finding a custodian willing to accommodate your plan. Hopefully Fidelity agrees with covered calls.
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Old 06-24-2012, 08:00 AM   #184
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Update on my strategy of selling near dated naked index puts:

This strategy has continued to be very profitable for me. To summarize, I have an account that I use mainly for trading options. I mess around with different strategies but mainly I sell weekly ATM SPY puts each and every week. On Fridays I sell another batch of SPY puts that are expiring that day. I call these "daily puts".

The account, which is about 20% of my entire portfolio is mostly fully invested in index ETFs along with my overall asset allocation and I use the buying power from my stock positions to sell my naked puts. If I wasn't selling puts, my accounts would look pretty much like the majority of people here, maybe leaning towards the slightly less risk averse people. I'm about 70 / 30 overall.

The ETFs in my trading account have a return so far in 2012 of 7.4%. The profit Ive made from selling index puts results in another 7.3% return. My total return is a bit less that 14.7% because Ive lost some money making other options trades that didn't work out as well as the simple mechanical strategy of selling these naked index puts.

As for the discussion that went on for quite a while about whether selling cash secured index puts would outperform the index itself, I now have real time results for just under a year. Selling the puts is still outperforming the index itself but by a much closer margin that I had thought it would.
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Old 06-26-2012, 05:15 AM   #185
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I have been following a similar strategy, but only selling weekly puts since Feb 2 of this year. I missed a few weeks when I was out of town and not sure I could be near a computer. Also there were some week where I didn't have sufficient margin to trade on Friday and had to wait until Monday. It worked out great this week.

This is only an experiment so I trade 5 options per week. So far I am up $243 (whoopee) on the other hand the SPY is down 1.0% during the same period. I suppose being up .4% is better than being down but...

I also lost a small amount of money trading other options. I did this mainly to get enough trades to qualify for the M* options newsletter, from opening my Optionshouse account. The M* newsletter cost $995 year (way overpriced) and I lost just over $1,100 in the options account.
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Old 06-26-2012, 06:38 AM   #186
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What percentage of your available margin are you using? I'm trying to determine whats an acceptable amount of risk. Right now I'm using less than 20% of what I have available for the weekly puts. In other words, I could sell 5 times as many puts if I wanted to. I would've made a heck of a lot of money but the risk is way too much to do that on a regular basis.
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Old 06-27-2012, 06:04 AM   #187
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What percentage of your available margin are you using? I'm trying to determine whats an acceptable amount of risk. Right now I'm using less than 20% of what I have available for the weekly puts. In other words, I could sell 5 times as many puts if I wanted to. I would've made a heck of a lot of money but the risk is way too much to do that on a regular basis.

Per your suggestion I opened an optionhouse account with $45K which is small fraction of my liquid assets, in order to qualify for newsletter and conduct the SPY put option trade experiment. On some weeks I find that trying to sell a second set of puts on Friday exceed my available margin. I have 18K in cash in the account, so I think I am using near 100% for this account. But I could do a lot lot more in my Schwab account.

The thing is the only thing I like better about OptionsHouse is the pricing. The Schwab trading platform is vastly better and they offer a lot of other services, so no way I am moving over my major account to OH.

From a risk tolerance viewpoint I could see myself trading 50 or possible 100 contracts but that would the upper limit.
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Old 06-27-2012, 06:32 AM   #188
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Per your suggestion I opened an optionhouse account with $45K which is small fraction of my liquid assets, in order to qualify for newsletter and conduct the SPY put option trade experiment. On some weeks I find that trying to sell a second set of puts on Friday exceed my available margin. I have 18K in cash in the account, so I think I am using near 100% for this account. But I could do a lot lot more in my Schwab account.
Isn't the margin required for a naked put roughly 25% of the underlying, or 0.25 x 100 x 132 = $3,300 per contract? Since you can post other marginable securities held in the account, wouldn't you actually be able to do as many as about 13 contracts (assuming you only did naked SPY puts in the account)?
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Old 06-27-2012, 06:46 AM   #189
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Yes you are right it is roughly $3K per contract. However I do have some stocks and other options in the account. I had been doing well writing spreads on USO, until oil prices dropped like a rock. Realistically now that I got enough trades to qualify for the newsletters, I should just stick to mechanically writing SPY puts but the testosterone...
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Old 08-11-2012, 08:38 AM   #190
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Isn't the margin required for a naked put roughly 25% of the underlying, or 0.25 x 100 x 132 = $3,300 per contract? Since you can post other marginable securities held in the account, wouldn't you actually be able to do as many as about 13 contracts (assuming you only did naked SPY puts in the account)?
Actually its closer to 20%. Currently SPY is at 140.84. At Optionshouse it takes $2741 in margin to sell a 140 weekly naked put. $2741/$14084= 19.5%. I checked a couple other stocks and they were in the 19-20% range as well.

I now have more than one year of real time results of selling weekly naked SPY puts under my belt. This report covers the first 52 weeks which ended a couple weeks ago.

Anyone who has read this thread knows my method so I wont go over it again. It takes about $27500 in margin for every 10 contracts. Over these 52 weeks, Ive made $21040 for every 10 contracts sold. Thats a return on margin of 76.5%. SPY returned 15.9% (not counting dividends) over these 52 weeks.

I have 42 weeks of real time results of selling "daily puts". Selling puts on Friday that expire that very day. Ive made $3626 for every 10 contracts sold. That's a return on margin of 13.2%. Since the trades are opened and closed on Friday, the SPY results to compare to only include those same Fridays. If I had bought and sold SPY each Friday, I would've made 2.76%.

These number include all commissions.
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Old 08-11-2012, 12:58 PM   #191
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Anyone who has read this thread knows my method so I wont go over it again. It takes about $27500 in margin for every 10 contracts. Over these 52 weeks, Ive made $21040 for every 10 contracts sold. Thats a return on margin of 76.5%. SPY returned 15.9% (not counting dividends) over these 52 weeks.
I have 42 weeks of real time results of selling "daily puts". Selling puts on Friday that expire that very day. Ive made $3626 for every 10 contracts sold. That's a return on margin of 13.2%. Since the trades are opened and closed on Friday, the SPY results to compare to only include those same Fridays. If I had bought and sold SPY each Friday, I would've made 2.76%.
These number include all commissions.
Thanks for the full-disclosure analysis. It's all too hard to come by on the Internet.

Are those numbers before taxes? How many hours per week are you investing in the actual research, execution, tracking, and tax prep? Schedule D can't be much fun, no matter how much TurboTax offers to "help".

Dixonge's "insane ER strategy" went great until he got nailed on a bad market day, which seemed to wipe out his whole stake. I'm not tarring you with the same brush, but you are taking on some degree of asymmetrical risk. Have you had a casualty like that happen to you? What's your worst mistake? What do you wish you'd done differently?
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Old 08-11-2012, 02:39 PM   #192
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Anyone who has read this thread knows my method so I wont go over it again. It takes about $27500 in margin for every 10 contracts. Over these 52 weeks, Ive made $21040 for every 10 contracts sold. Thats a return on margin of 76.5%. SPY returned 15.9% (not counting dividends) over these 52 weeks.
If the margin is 20%, that's 5 to 1 leverage. So if I divide your 76.5% return on margin by 5, I get 15.3%, less than the SPY return of 15.9%, not including dividends which will add about 2% to the SPY return. So on a risk-adjusted basis:

Return on Naked Puts = 15.3%

Return on SPY = 17.9%

Not surprisingly, the naked put strategy has underformed buy and hold by 2.6% over the past 52 weeks on a risk-adjusted basis.
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Old 08-11-2012, 04:04 PM   #193
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If the margin is 20%, that's 5 to 1 leverage. So if I divide your 76.5% return on margin by 5, I get 15.3%, less than the SPY return of 15.9%, not including dividends which will add about 2% to the SPY return. So on a risk-adjusted basis:

Return on Naked Puts = 15.3%

Return on SPY = 17.9%

Not surprisingly, the naked put strategy has underformed buy and hold by 2.6% over the past 52 weeks on a risk-adjusted basis.
When the market is doing very well which it has in the past year, the naked puts will slightly underperform on a percentage basis. When the market rises only a small amount, is flat, or drops, then the naked puts will out perform on a percentage basis.

But even when the market is up a good chunk like it has been and the naked puts underperform slightly on a percentage basis, they still crush SPY on a profit basis because I dont have the margin available to actually buy the SPY stock. To sell 50 naked SPY contracts it takes about $135,000 in margin or buying power. It would take over $700,000 to buy 5000 shares of SPY. Bascially I can control 5 times as many shares of SPY by selling naked puts, hence I can make 5 times as much money if the returns are the same on a percentage basis. When the market is flat I can make much more than 5 times as much.
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Old 08-11-2012, 04:21 PM   #194
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Thanks for the full-disclosure analysis. It's all too hard to come by on the Internet.

Are those numbers before taxes? How many hours per week are you investing in the actual research, execution, tracking, and tax prep? Schedule D can't be much fun, no matter how much TurboTax offers to "help".

Dixonge's "insane ER strategy" went great until he got nailed on a bad market day, which seemed to wipe out his whole stake. I'm not tarring you with the same brush, but you are taking on some degree of asymmetrical risk. Have you had a casualty like that happen to you? What's your worst mistake? What do you wish you'd done differently?
Yes, the numbers are before taxes. It takes no research at all to sell naked SPY puts every week. Its mechanical and takes about a minute. Now the tax prep is another story and, yes, it takes quite a while and is no fun at all.

The amount of risk that Im taking is something Ive been working on trying to measure but havent figured out how yet. I'm using a ton of margin on Fridays, but on the other 4 days of the week, I am close to 50% in cash. So a prolonged drop in the market isn't going to kill me. It would be no worse than if I was fully invested in SPY. My worst mistake has nothing to do with selling options. It has to do with buying options which is unrelated to this strategy. The only thing I wish I had done differently with regards to options trading is to not combat the boredom of a mechanical strategy like this by making other options trades that haven't worked out too well.
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Old 08-11-2012, 05:46 PM   #195
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Also, I know the main thing that matters is total profit but as far as variance goes, out of the 52 weeks, there were 19 weeks where SPY was lower but only 10 weeks that the naked puts lost money. And in the 10 weeks that the naked puts lost money, they lost less money than you would've lost by buying an equal number of SPY shares. Of course, in the weeks where SPY shot up, the return on the naked puts was lower since you have a locked in max profit each week. So overall there is lower variance and less violent swings.
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Old 08-11-2012, 07:31 PM   #196
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When the market is doing very well which it has in the past year, the naked puts will slightly underperform on a percentage basis.
Not sure I would say slightly.

15.3 / 17.9 = 0.855

So you would only earn 85.5% of the dollars earned on SPY measured on an unleveraged basis.

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When the market rises only a small amount, is flat, or drops, then the naked puts will out perform on a percentage basis.
This is only true if you are not leveraged.

If you are levered 5 to 1, you will lose 5 times the amount by which SPY drops by more than the put premium.
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Old 08-11-2012, 07:36 PM   #197
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RE: margin and risk...

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Basically I can control 5 times as many shares of SPY by selling naked puts, hence I can make 5 times as much money if the returns are the same on a percentage basis. When the market is flat I can make much more than 5 times as much.
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The amount of risk that Im taking is something Ive been working on trying to measure but havent figured out how yet. I'm using a ton of margin on Fridays, ... .
Here's what I do (though I very, very seldom use margin today, I have in the past, and tend to look at any transaction this way - even/especially buying a call):

First, take a breath and determine what is the absolute maximum one-day loss you could stomach. Keep in mind that just like tossing a penny, heads don't come up alternately - there can be long streaks of tails. So consider a number that you could live with, even if the seemingly impossible/improbable happened, and it hit you two or three times in a row. Would you have enough to move on with your plans, or would it be a life-changing event? Could we have another 'flash crash'? Could it happen on a Friday?

Now look at what it would take to hit that number with 5:1 margin. Still comfortable? Then maybe you are OK. I know some people that are very good at convincing themselves that such-and-such would never happen to them. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. Margin is a tool, like most tools, well, you know.

Suggested reading, the "Black Swan" books by Taleb.

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Old 08-12-2012, 06:27 AM   #198
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Yes, the numbers are before taxes. It takes no research at all to sell naked SPY puts every week. Its mechanical and takes about a minute. Now the tax prep is another story and, yes, it takes quite a while and is no fun at all.

The amount of risk that Im taking is something Ive been working on trying to measure but havent figured out how yet. I'm using a ton of margin on Fridays, but on the other 4 days of the week, I am close to 50% in cash. So a prolonged drop in the market isn't going to kill me. It would be no worse than if I was fully invested in SPY. My worst mistake has nothing to do with selling options. It has to do with buying options which is unrelated to this strategy. The only thing I wish I had done differently with regards to options trading is to not combat the boredom of a mechanical strategy like this by making other options trades that haven't worked out too well.
I very much appreciate you keeping us informed on this.
I have decided to abandon your strategy in large part because of your results, but for other also reasons.

I have not calculated the return on S&P put strategy since I last posted, but overall the $46,000 I put in my Optionhouse account at the end of the year is now worth $47,485. The 3.2% returns trails the S&P although not because of the strategy but as you say the making the other bad options trades (specifically buying long-term calls and puts on blue chip stocks) and the temptation of the $5 commission.

I have also found it hassle to have to be tied to my computer every Friday, its no big deal 90%+ of the time but the 10% when I am out of town or busy in the morning creates some anxiety. What if the market crashes and my put get exercised and the market continues to go down on Monday?

I have also found it takes way more than a 1 minute per week. I am not necessarily trying to day trade, but force of habit, and the concern of running into another flash crash, means I always enter limit orders at the ask price. Roughly 1/2 the time these don't get execute right away so I find myself babysitting the trade, which in turn creates the boredom factor..

I haven't even had to face the tax issue yet, Schwab transactions seamlessly import into Turbo Tax so the 100+ transactions I had with them only took an hour or so to go through. I hope Optionshouse is as easy.

Which brings me to last problem. If I was trading 50 contracts at time, I'd enjoy lower commission $16 for 50 vs $5 vs 5 contract, but more importantly the amount of money would be worth doing. In order to do that I would need to transfer much of my money from Schwab to Optionhouse. But other than lower commission at OH, I like everything else better about Schwab and I don't want to screw up a 30 years of doing business with firm and being treated more than fairly.

Finally, I am always concerned about VIX. Like many things associated with the stock market I find there is not a strong correlation, between the math and the underlying reality. Right now VIX is around 15, last year it was between 30-40. While I believe VIX is an accurate measure of volatility I don't think it all reflects the fundamentals of the market.

Last Aug the market was in panic and with 1-2% daily moves; because of the debt ceiling stalemate, the US downgrade by S&P, and crisis in Euro, and poor economic outlook. One year later the US economy is in no better shape, Europe is much worse shape, the Euro crisis is no closer to being resolved, the debt ceiling stalemate has been replaced by the end of the year Fiscal cliff, oh and the market is up 17%.

Yet I am only getting 1/2 the premiums for writing portfolio insurance today than I was last year?.

In large measure I agree with Utrecht, writing puts is different than taking a margin loan (if for no other reason than we aren't paying interest). So I don't think the calculation of 5x leverage is really an accurate assessment of the risk. I'm inclined to think that this is probably a less risky way of investing than simply buy&hold, but I'll concede the math is complicated.

On the other hand I am pretty positive that risk of an huge market sell off in the next 6 month is best case no different than it was a year ago, and probably worse. Over the years reading Buffett's letters the one thing that struck me was how the insurance business is always way more profitable the year after the Hurricanes struck than any other year.

So for me I going wait until I see the next hurricane before I resume writing options.
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Old 08-12-2012, 06:48 AM   #199
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You seem to only like to point out the points that support your argument and not discuss that ones that support mine. You say that the naked puts underperform, and not only slightly. Actually the raw returns are the following: Naked Puts 17.9%, SPY 15.9%. When I subtract out commissions and add dividends it becomes: Naked Puts 17.4%, SPY 17.8%. So far its very close in a pretty good year. But if we are including dividends, we also have to subtract out margin interest in this scenario. I'm not going to use actual figures because it depends how much a person is going out on margin to buy the SPY but clearly the naked puts now have the advantage. Not too mention the fact that a person might not even have enough margin to be able to by the SPY shares.
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Old 08-12-2012, 07:01 AM   #200
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Not sure I would say slightly.

15.3 / 17.9 = 0.855

So you would only earn 85.5% of the dollars earned on SPY measured on an unleveraged basis.



This is only true if you are not leveraged.

If you are levered 5 to 1, you will lose 5 times the amount by which SPY drops by more than the put premium.
Again, you only point out the negative aspects and ignore the positive. What happens when SPY rises by less than the put premium, or drops by less than the put premium? That's what happens the majority of the time.

Since we are pointing out things that help our arguments....what if the market was in a slow descent and spent an entire year where every single week it lost .25%. At the end of the year SPY would be down about -13%. Depending on the VIX, the naked puts would make around 39% or 200% on margin. Thats a ridiculous example, but there are several down years for the market that I studied that the naked puts would've made money. Variance is lower with this strategy.
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