Blog Archives

Quite Frankly

December 19, 2011

Good morning. The market posted a pre-holiday loss last week, with the SPY down 4.46 (3.5%) to close at 121.59. The VIX, however, was down 7.9% to close at 24.29, reflecting investor anticipation of markets entering a more holiday (meaning quieter and less volatile) period leading to the New Year. That would normally be the expectation, but the last few years have been anything but “normal” so if the premium levels decrease too much it might be worth putting on a position that would benefit from some unexpected movement.

A Fine Line

March 14, 2011

Good morning. Despite a rally last Friday (after news of the disaster in Japan) the S&P closed down 1.63 (1.2%) to end a fairly volatile week. The VIX was up 5.3% to close at 20.07. Putting the VIX move into real numbers, we had been doing some long premium spreads in the SPY for those in the PIP program when the price of the weekly at the money straddle (SPY@ 132, the combined price of the 132 call and 132 put) was roughly 1.50 with 4-5 trading days to go.