A day trader is a trader whose time horizon for trades is intraday, often for as little as a few seconds, but generally anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. Day traders attempt to capitalize on significant intraday price movements and volatility by executing multiple quick trades that capture some part of the overall […]
Volatility crush is a term used in options trading to describe the swift reduction in implied volatility of an option after the underlying stock’s earnings are announced or some other major news event. A volatility crush occurs because the implied volatility of options will rise before an earnings announcement when the future price path of […]
Private placement refers to a method of raising capital where select investors are invited through the offer of equity shares. Unlike an IPO where shares are made available on the open market, a private placement involves select investors like large banks, mutual funds, insurance companies and pension funds. Furthermore, the capital raising event does not […]
An option class is the set of all call or put options for sale for a given security, including every expiration date and strike price combination. Option Class in Trading The option class for any security is used as a broad metric for gauging the relative interest in that security. For example, a high volume […]
Option series refers to a group of options belonging to the same security and characterized by the same price and expiration month. It can also be defined as a set of option contracts that belong to the same class and possess the same expiration date and exercise price. A good example of an option series […]
The put-call ratio is the ratio of total trading volume of put options divided by the total trading volume of call options. For example, if the total trading volume of put options was 4 and the total trading volume of call options was 2, then the ratio would be 2. Put-Call Ratio in Trading The […]
Why You Should Care About the Effect of Dividends on Option Prices In theory the value of future dividends should be reflected in the current price of a stock, which then determines the price of the associated options of that stock. However, the actual mechanics of dividend payouts means that their effect on the price […]
In option trading, intrinsic value (I.V.) refers to the difference between the exercise price (strike price) and the market value of a security. Professor Benjamin Graham from Columbia is credited for having conceptualized the margin of safety concept. This happened in 1934 and resulted in the good professor introducing the idea of calculating the I.V […]
What Is Quadruple Witching? Quadruple witching is a market event where several derivatives contracts expire on the same day. The simultaneous expiration of all of these hedging products creates tons of order flow and repositioning, resulting in significant volatility and market whipsaws. It’s called quad witching because these four types of contracts expire on […]
At this point almost everyone has heard of Bitcoin, especially after its meteoric price rise during the last few months of 2017. Now people everywhere are wondering how they can get in on the action. However, very few people actually know how they can safely purchase and hold Bitcoin, as it is an asset unlike […]
