A Calendar spread is when you sell an option and buy another one with a more distant expiration date. This can be created with either puts or calls. For example, let’s say you wanted to play Netflix with calendar spread because you figure that the stock has dropped too far too quickly and will bounce…
This is basically a combination of Bull Spread and Bear Spread. The main feature of this strategy us that your risk is fixed and your upside/profit is capped. Selling options with the same strike price and also buying options with the same expiration months, but higher and lower strike prices. Generally, the butterfly is in…
The point at which a strategy produces no profit and no loss.
A Box Spread is simply a combination of two vertical spreads. These spreads are used by professional Options traders who are trying to take advantage of a situation where the cost of the spreads (both verticals) is less than what the verticals would be worth when they expire. They consider this to be a type…
This is a large equity trade consisting of 100,000 or more shares.
This is the difference between the current bid price and the current asking, or offering price. For example, if you see a quote that looks like this: 2.05 x 3.10 – what this means is that the bid is 2.05 and the ask is 3.10. Therefore the bid-ask thread is 1.05 i.e the difference between…
This is a measure of a stock’s volatility relative to the S&P 500 Index. High Beta stocks have high volatility. Stocks that have a beta reading of 1.00 or greater tend to move faster or are more volatile than the S&P index. And stocks that have a beta less than 1.00 tend to move slower…
This is when you buy a Put and sell another Put with a lower strike price. You would only use this spread if you are expecting the underlying stock to move up moderately because it will help you to benefit from the time decay. For example, let’s say you are anticipating a moderate rise in…
This is when you sell a call and buy a call with a higher strike price. A Bear Call Spread is used when you have a bearish outlook on a stock and you want to bet against it by going short but you don’t want to shirt the stock because it theoretically has unlimited risk….
These are the Options with the most time left until expiration. Or, simply, the most distant expiration months. As you can see in the image below, the Jan 2024 and the Jun 2024 expiration would be considered the “back months” because they have 570 and 724 days to expiration, respectively.
