Moneyness

If you sell a certain type of option and you already have or get the thing you’re supposed to sell through that option, you’re called a covered call writer. EXAMPLE: An individual owns 100 shares of XYZ common stock. If she writes one physical delivery XYZ call option—giving the call holder the right to purchase…

My name is Chris Corwin Gayle and I am a trader and Trading System developer. The purpose of this article is to break down the concept of Unusual Options Activity into simple language and show you exactly how to use it profitably. There are numerous sources online that are just outright misrepresenting what UOA is…

Are Call Sweeps Bullish? The short answer is not always. I have been tracking and trading Unusual Options Activity for many years and I have seen both Bullish & Bearish sweeps on the Call side. What this means is that you can have a sweep order to sell Calls which is essentially taking a bearish…

A closing purchase is an order that you place to offset an existing short position. For example, If you sell a call option to open a new position, you would then need to offset or close that position with a closing order to buy. In other words, you would buy-to-close.

The Thinkorswim platform can be a bit intimidating and hard to navigate especially if the only other platform you have known is something like Robinhood or one of those plain vanilla tools.  But Thinkorswim is like a Swiss army knife of trading and is really a powerful platform once you learn your way around it.  In…

This is when you enter into a position by purchasing one part of the spread at a time rather than buying it all at once. Legging can improve the risk-reward of the trade if the underlying stock moves in the right direction. If not, it can reduce the potential loss.