Friday 25 March 2016

iron condor

The iron condor credit spread strategy is used by stock market traders if they believe that a stock will probably trade sideways for a specific amount of time. Perhaps they expect small fluctuations up and down in the underlying stock price, however over another 30 days price action will remain relatively unchanged. When here is the case, equity option trades can take advantage of what is called time decay, or positive theta. What theta represents is the decay in the worth of an out-of-the-money option as its expiration date approaches. The iron condor setup is simply the mixture of a bull put spread and a bear call spread.iron condor

This trade is initiated by selling out-of-the-money options and purchasing further out-of-the-money-options. Once structured, the trade will be given a net credit since the sold options generate a higher premium than the price of the purchased options. As time decay continues to wear at the worth of options, the trade can potentially become profitable. However, sharp moves by the underlying stock to the upside or downside will cause the position to become a loss. The further from the money the purchased choices are, the more the chance versus reward setup will increase. Simply, the more risk you take on for the trade, the more credit you can potentially receive at expiration.

We shall now create a typical example of a metal condor trade and how exactly to implement one. Let's declare that Apple (AAPL) is trading at $620 per give 41 days to go until expiration. We believe that it is highly probable that the stock will undoubtedly be trading between $580 and $640 at expiration. If we focus on the bull put spread, we'd want to buy the 580 put strike option for $4.40 and sell the 590 put strike option for $6.00. This provides us a net credit of $1.60. Next, we'd complete the iron condor position by creating a bear call spread. To get this done, we'd purchase the 660 call strike option for $4.25 and sell the 650 call strike option for $6.20. This could give us a net credit of $1.95.options trading

To calculate our overall risk and reward, we'd simply add up our total credits from each spread, gives us $3.55. To calculate our risk for the trade, we'd subtract the credit received from the full total difference in strike prices. In our example would subtract $3.55 from $10.00, gives us an overall total of $6.45 of risk. Therefore, we can calculate this trade provides the potential to produce $3.55 for each $6.45 we risk. Since one option contract represents 100 shares of the underlying stock, we have the capability to profit $355 at expiration while risking $645. Therefore, if Apple stock is trading between $590 and $650 per share at expiration this trade will undoubtedly be fully profitable.

The condor strategies are great to make use of in markets that are not experiencing plenty of volatility and neither the bulls nor the bears have a dominant stranglehold on the market. It's highly suggested to never execute a metal condor on a stock when earnings will occur within the period of time of the trade being open. Earnings are one of the single biggest drivers of stock price movements. Always make sure you check for upcoming earnings on the business you are considering opening this trade on. Also, make sure you identify clear quantities of support and resistance, as these could help identify high probability areas with which to setup your iron condor. Identifying the correct times to open this kind of trade allows a trade to profit when a stock is trending sideways. Because that is so usually the case with markets, being able to properly execute the iron condor strategy is crucial to being fully a successful options trader.

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