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Most options traders see their world as a choice between calls or puts, alone or in various combinations. But there is more. With a chooser option, traders can open a position and decide later whether it will be a call or a put. This is also called an as you like it option.

Steady Options has now been trading the Leveraged Anchor strategy for two years, and, somewhat to my surprise, 2020 went even better than 2019. On the year, Leveraged Anchor was up 31.7%, while the total return of the S&P 500 was 18.4%.

The “ratchet option” is so-called because as a series, each successive position activates when the previous option has expired. The trader ratchets up (or down) to the next position. Each one is set up to be as close to the money as possible. It has many names, including cliquet, moving strike, ladder, lock-in, or reset option.

Steady Momentum Put Write (SMPW) is one of the available subscription services at Steady Options. We launched the strategy in early 2019, so we now have two years of performance to evaluate on both an absolute basis and relative to the strategy’s benchmark, PUTW (WisdomTree CBOE S&P 500 PutWrite Strategy Fund). 

One of the more complex areas of options analysis involves pricing formulas. The best known among these is the Black Scholes Model (BSM). This is a widely cited method for attempting to determine what the option’s premium should be, but it is deeply flawed.

The standard call and put are well known to all option traders, but many exotic and more advanced options can also be opened. Whether a specific broker allows trading in these, and whether a trader has the necessary trading level, are questions to be addressed. This article just defines many of the exotic options that are possible.

Options traders are rightfully concerned with the number of days to expiration of an option. At the time the position is opened, whether long or short, the issue of time decay must be at the forefront of risk evaluation. But is this performed accurately?

Leveraged Anchor and its diverse counterpart have been performing above expectations so far this year. In fact, since Diversified Leveraged Anchor launched in April, it is up over 40% while the same index blend (SPY, QQQ, IWM, EFA) are up just over 33%. This has led to a growing increase in interest of the product, particularly given its hedged nature. 

Great emphasis is placed on timing of trade entry and exit, and rightly so. Among the more interesting of selection is the day before expiration, usually Thursday of expiration week. Assuming no earnings announcements or dividends are scheduled for this day, specific time decay attributes are worthy of study.

The interest in volatility for options trading is logical and understandable. However, the nature of volatility in not universally understood or agreed upon. In fact, it is more complex than most people believe. Options traders think of volatility coming in two forms, historical and implied.

When it comes to calculating likely returns from option activity, traders contend with a variety of variations. Returns may be skewed (with declines in value more likely than increases), or unstable in many forms. Or the outcome might reveal itself in the form of a fat tail.

Investors over the world are struggling with yield in their portfolios.  Government investments are at historically low levels, with thirty-year treasuries basically declining every year for almost thirty years straight: