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BookingAlpha Option Trading Advisory

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Historical Performance of Put Writing Strategies

This article appeared first on enhanced-investing.com
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I spent some time this past weekend going over some recent White Papers published on the CBOE website. One that caught my attention is titled: Historical Performance of Put-Writing Strategies, written by Oleg Bondarenko, which you can download here.

There are several important points to mention. But I’ll make it short and you can get all the details in the paper. First the historical results, now with more than 30 years of data:
Monthly At the money Put selling (PUT Index) is now a little below the S&P500 when it comes to Compound Returns. It was better for many years (read Out-performance of a Put selling strategy) until now, due to the persistent bullishness of the last decade. Other Option-selling based strategies like BXMD (30-delta Covered Call index) do still beat the S&P500, but it is not included in the study. However, when it comes to risk adjusted returns, the PUT index is still much better than the S&P500. This is clearly reflected in the summary:
  • Long-term performance. Over more than 32-year period, the PUT index outperformed the traditional indices on a risk-adjusted basis. Compared to S&P 500, PUT has a comparable annual compound return (9.54% versus 9.80%), but a substantially lower standard deviation (9.95% versus 14.93%). As a result, the annualized Sharpe ratio is 0.65 (PUT) and 0.49 (S&P 500). 
  • Volatility risk premium. Historically, the option implied volatility has considerably exceeded the realized volatility. From 1990 to 2018, the average implied volatility, as measured by the Cboe Volatility Index® (VIX®), is 19.3%, while the average realized volatility of the S&P 500 index is 15.1%, implying the difference of 4.2%. Due to high volatility risk premium, PUT has delivered attractive risk-adjusted performance.
Another interesting point is the superior results of Put selling vs Put buying. In this case using the PPUT CBOE Index which holds the S&P500 index long term while buying an out of the money Put option (5% below the market) every month:
  • PUT versus PPUT. Since June 1986, the cumulative return is 1835% for PUT and 708% for PPUT. Compared to PPUT, PUT has a much higher annual compound return (9.54% versus 6.64%), a lower standard deviation (9.95% versus 12.08%), much higher risk adjusted measures (the annualized Sharpe ratio of 0.65 versus 0.33), a less severe drawdown (the maximum drawdown of -32.7% versus -38.9%, the longest drawdown of 40 months versus 80 months). PUT has a negative exposure to the volatility risk, which accounts for 0.29% of its average monthly excess return. In contrast, PPUT has a positive exposure to the volatility risk, which accounts for -0.17% of its average monthly excess return.
Selling Put options makes sense. Buying Put options may make sense as protective measures for your portfolio here and there, but should not be used as a permanent income producing strategy. It will be a drag to long-term returns.


Further Reading:

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Monday, June 24, 2019

August RUT Elephant

Trade Details:

4 Aug RUT 1390/1380 Credit Put spread @0.70 credit each
2 Aug RUT 1650/1660 Credit Call spread @1.15 credit each

3 Aug IWM 166 Long Calls @0.33 debit each

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Should I sell options during low volatility environments?

A reader recently contacted me with the following question:

"I was just curious about how to approach low Implied Volatility with the strategy. Do you still trade the strategy during times of low volatility or wait for higher IV and stay out of the market?"



To clarify, he is referring, among all the things I do, only to the  neutral trading, Option Premium selling oriented via Iron Condors, Elephants or just simple Credit spreads, whose results by the way are available here.

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Enhanced Investing - May 2019 Results

This article appeared first on enhanced-investing.com
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May ended up bringing a $312.95 realized gain for the account after commissions ($25,000 account at Tastyworks, with 2:1 margin).

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

July SPX Unbalanced Iron Condor

Trade Details:

4 July SPX 2670/2660 Credit Put spread @0.65 credit each
1 July SPX 3040/3050 Credit Call spread @0.90 credit