Today I have nice $95K Fed Call after them closing my small trade yesterday. This is too annoying I am going to have to change brokerages, any recommendation?
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Wiki Selling TSLA Options - Be the House
- Thread starter adiggs
- Start date
Today I have nice $95K Fed Call after them closing my small trade yesterday. This is too annoying I am going to have to change brokerages, any recommendation?
IBKR! If you trade frequently, and on margin, you can negotiate the rate.
TD Ameritrade is quite good but you may dislike the cap on margin allowance for a single stock, margin rate is also negotiable
Ditched ETrade back in the early aughts. Use IBKR and TD mostly now.
@Yoona are you opening the IC legs separately or at the same time? I told myself not to mess with BCS again and I haven't but maybe I will place some small learning trades.
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BrownOuttaSpec
Active Member
Who would have guessed that I bought next week's 12/10 800/900 BPS too soon yesterday? I am getting really good at that. 
Can you sell some 1100/1200 BCS please?....Who would have guessed that I bought next week's 12/10 800/900 BPS too soon yesterday? I am getting really good at that.
lots of volume at 1050 for tomorrow's expiry. And lots of open interest in the 1100 puts for tomorrow. Between those 2 I suppose we get some support. That said 1060 seems to be some trigger level according to spotgamma, where stock tends to get volatile driven by options positioning.
And we printed a few trades at 1060 and look to be making our way back to that level right now. Grab the popcorn!
Sold a batch of 850/800 for next week. Will sell a batch of 750/700 for next week if they get to a premium that I like.
Then hopefully we get a relief rally or a real reversal and I can then enter the BCS legs for all of these BPS I now have for next week.
Chicagoguy
Member
What is the margin allowance between the 2 using portfolio margin? Do you use one vs the other for anything in particular? I use TD/ToS and like ToS overall, but have thought about switching or trying out IBKR
I find that overall TD is easier and more intuitive to use.
Portfolio margin looks more generous in IBKR, but I have to be honest, my main use of margin is to avoid it at this point so I cannot give you fine details on that. I have been very lucky with capital appreciation to the point of now being more interested in capital preservation.
I set up IBKR a while ago to access different global markets and other instruments, but in the end I did very little of that. I did buy TSLA LEAPS that are still coming due from 2018 and 2019 (next one in JAN) and because of this have experienced explosive growth in my IBKR account. Main activity there for me now has been to use conservative CCs and put selling to eliminate margin I have been taking on to exercise LEAPs. That has been working. I did do a couple of BCS and BPS after perusing this thread lately which seemed to work fine.
IBKR is a different layout, but many people prefer it. I would open a test account and mess around with it to see if you like.
I opened two for fun and learning IC's 1290/1240/960/910 for a 25% return for next week.
Set the limit order to open more -890/+700 today at $10, turn out maximum was only around $9.5, didn't get fill again, well, always an interesting mind game.
corduroy
Active Member
I said I was done for the week, but $4 premiums on that dip were too juicy, so added a few more 850/750s. That helps pay for the kids Cyberquads that I just ordered. It's going to be a great Christmas!
scubastevo80
Member
Is anyone long stock and writing BPS (either with or w/o margin)? We effectively want to be long (long-term) but take advantage of short-term stock dips / volatility by using BPS. Presently we're 100% cash and writing BPS, but wondering if the stock drops to $1000, for example, how we could purchase the stock and continue to write BPS. With margin, is it safe to assume some part of the stock could be used as collateral?
I am long stock and writing BPS using margin buying power. I think it's pretty common here. Ultimately it's like any margin usage (but with no interest cost) in that you are on the hook for it if things go south and you can get a margin call which requires liquidation of shares. As long as you only use a small portion of the margin that is an unrealistic scenario, though you certainly can take big losses. You can also sell BCS this way with the nice fact that you cannot get margin called, but also Tesla likes to go up, so be careful 
The discussion about spread widths encapsulates most of my own thinking on the topic, and I like to see the rationale from different people. We each have our outcomes and risk and stuff that matters to us.
I use wide spread widths because I know that I'll use roughly all of my available capital to back put spreads (that's me) and the wide spread widths keeps my contract count and leverage down. It's my own artificial restriction that I impose. As an alternative to the $300 wide spreads, do the same # of contracts with a $100 wide spread and leave 2/3rds of the capital uncovered and available to save the position if needed. I prefer to go ahead and have it all in use with a lower cost insurance put - I choose the short put the same way, whether I'd be doing a $50 wide spread or $400 wide spread.
EDIT to add: The other technique I use to keep my put spread contract count down is to restrict the cash available for backing put spreads. I restrict the available cash by buying calls (for covered calls). I'm aiming for a 1:2 cash to value of long calls with a plan to sell those calls as needed to keep my cash level at a target level. That might mean the ratio drops to 1:1 after a max loss, but is a way I use to set cash aside and not use it for put spreads.
I also have enough cash available to back the put spreads that I don't need to increase my weekly return on a % or absolute basis. Sure it'd be nice to have a $25M/year income rate but I'm already up 6x from my best paycheck year, and we lived very well when that was our income. With what I've been learning and doing this year we might be closer to 10-15x next year.
My wife and I are learning here at the end of the year, that giving away large amounts of money is some actual work - who would have thought that, eh? This is sort of a test drive / getting accustomed to giving away much larger amounts of money than we've every done in our lives; I expect our charitable giving, in absolute terms, will be going up for years and years to come. Sure earning more is always nice, but once you've got 2 or 3x of "enough", then at least for us - it's just more to give away (which is a good thing in itself, but uhm...).
This is definitely not intended as a criticism of anybody else - its just my own view on the world and what we/I am doing. If I had $B kind of income then there are currently inaccessible things that I'd like to do. But that's a few orders of magnitude away from where I'm at, with no path to that income / wealth level. A joy ride into space - I think that's in the realm of possible in my life.
Non advice tangent.
If you would buy at $1000, maybe sell straight puts there for more premium 1000 is 2.2% yield for next week (either 1000 strike or 1000=strike-premium)? Or BPS 1000/800 to reduce collateral?
Could also get DITM LEAPs instead of stock to reduce cash tie up.
Rolled my 12/3 995/795 BPS to 12/10 BPS 950/750 for a 9.69 credit. The number spoke to me. Was considering 1000/800 since I don’t see us getting below $1000, especially with 12/9 next week, but I took everyone’s advice to not be greedy! We’ll see how it plays out.
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