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Option Concepts
Rather than just mechanically applying David’s strategy to our own
trading let us understand a few concepts in options trading in order to
better appreciate the profit drivers of David’s option writing strategy.
They include:
• Realized Volatility
• Implied Volatility
• Theta Decay
• Breakeven Price
• Gap Risk
Realized Volatility
Realized volatility (also called historical volatility) is the magnitude of
daily price movements, regardless of direction, of a stock, over a specific
historical period. It is a measure of a stock’s stability over a given period
of time. Technically speaking, it is a statistical measure of the dispersion
of returns for a given security or market index over a given period of
time. Generally, this measure is calculated by determining the average
deviation from the average price of a financial instrument in the given
time period. Using standard deviation is the most common, but not the
only, way to calculate historical volatility.
Historical volatility does not specifically measure the likelihood of loss,
although it can be used to do so. What it does measure is how far a
security's price moves away from its mean value. For trending markets,
historical volatility measures how far traded prices move away from a
central average, or moving average, price.
This is how a strongly trending can have low volatility (if the price hugs
its moving average on the way up or down) even though prices change
dramatically over time. The value of Historical Volatility does not
fluctuate dramatically from day to day but changes in value at a steady
pace over time.
This measure is frequently compared with implied volatility to determine
if options prices are over- or undervalued. Historical volatility is also used
in all types of risk valuations. Stocks with a high historical volatility usually
require a higher risk tolerance. And high volatility markets also require
wider stop loss levels and higher margin requirements.
Implied Volatility
Implied volatility is the estimated volatility, or gyrations, of a security's
price and is most commonly used when pricing options. Implied volatility
is sometimes referred to as "vol" or "IV." Volatility is commonly denoted by
the symbol σ
(sigma). Implied volatility is one of the deciding factors in
the pricing of options. Option which are pricing in higher implied volatility
will have higher premiums and vice versa.
Implied volatility is different from historical volatility in that IV isn't directly
observable in the market. Historical volatility measures past swings in
stock prices that can be directly calculated from the historical data of
stock prices for a specific period.
Implied volatility has to be determined by using an option pricing model.
Looking at the current traded market premium of a particular option
Implied Volatility is back-calculated using an options pricing model like
the Nobel prize winning Black-Scholes Model.
The Black-Scholes Model, the most widely used and well-known options
pricing model, factors in current stock price, options strike price, time
until expiration, expected future volatility of the stock and risk-free
interest rates to calculate the “fair price” (premium) of an option.
Instead of using the model to calculate a “fair price” for an option we
can take the current market premium and use it to back -calculate what
estimate of future volatility for the underlying stock is being implied by
the option.
That output of such a back calculation which is the estimate of future
volatility for the underlying stock is being implied by the option is called
Implied Volatility.
In general, implied volatility increases while the market is bearish, when
investors believe the asset's price will decline over time, and decreases
when the market is bullish, when investors believe that the price will rise
over time. This is due to the common belief that bearish markets are
more volatile than bullish markets.
It is beyond the scope of this material to explain in-depth the Black
Scholes Option Pricing Model. The use of an option pricing model is not
particularly necessary for implementing our options writing strategy.
However enterprising options traders who wish to amalgamate implied
volatility into their options trading strategy may keep in mind two
important points about volatility.
a) Both realized and implied volatility for a particular stock trade in
well-defined ranges over long periods of time. Hence an option
seller needs to extra careful and may decide to reduce his
volume of option writing when the implied volatility of options in
a particular stock is trading closer to the lower band of its
predefined range
b) Higher implied volatility also means higher time premium
embedded in an options price. Theta decay is the option seller’s
best friend. So in choosing options, option sellers will find it more
profitable to sell options on stocks which trade with high implied
volatility which in turn will depend on the stock price itself having
a high historical volatility. It is therefore no coincidence that Tata
Motors & Adani Enterprises figure prominently on the shortlist of
options David uses for his writing strategy.
Theta Decay
Figure 2: Theta decay slope
Option traders refer to the amount of loss in option value due to the
passage of time as the option’s theta or time decay. The technical
definition for Theta (time decay) is the rate at which an option position
loses value or premium given the passage of one day, all other factors
considered equal.
The total price (premium) of any option can be broken down into two
parts:
(a) Intrinsic Value + (b) Time Value = (c) Total Option Value
The intrinsic value when it comes to the options trading world, is how
much an option would be worth if it expired right now. If all the time on
an option suddenly disappeared and it was exercised, how much would
a trader make?. Options only have intrinsic value if they are in the money.
"In the money" is another way of saying an option has intrinsic value.
Puts are in the money (have intrinsic value) if their strike price is above
the current stock price. A put gives its owner the right to sell stock at the
put’s strike price. If the strike price is higher than the current stock price,
the owner will be able to sell the stock for more than it is currently worth.
The total profit at expiration (no time left) is the intrinsic value, or the
difference of the strike price and stock price (Strike Price – Stock Price =
Option Value at expiration and intrinsic value). If an option has no
intrinsic value at expiration (out of the money), it will expire worthless.
Let's say Nifty Spot is trading at 11,000 and we sell a July 2018 expiry put at
a strike price of 11,200 at Rs.256
Intrinsic Value = Strike Price – Stock Price
So, the Intrinsic Value of the Nifty Put will be 11,200 – 11,000 = 200 (Intrinsic
Value). The balance Rs.56 will be Time Value.
Calls are in the money (have intrinsic value) if the strike price is below
the current stock price (remember that a call gives the buyer, the right
to buy stock at the call’s strike price).
If the strike price is below the current stock price the call buyer will be
able to buy stock for less than it is currently worth. The total profit at
expiration (no time left) is the intrinsic value, the difference between the
stock price and strike price (Stock price – Strike Price = Option Value at
expiration and intrinsic value). Like puts, if a call option has no intrinsic
value at expiration (out of the money), it will expire worthless.
If Nifty Spot is trading at 11,000, and we sell a call at a strike price of 10,800
at a premium of 240, then the intrinsic value would be Rs.200 ( Spot –
Strike) with the balance Rs.40 being
The easiest way to think about time value is this: time value is everything
that is not intrinsic value.If we know an option’s total value (which is the
premium it is being bought/sold for), we can calculate the time value by
subtracting the intrinsic value, from the total value. Whatever is left is the
option’s time value. As an equation, it looks like:
Total Option Premium – Intrinsic Value = Time Value
But that doesn’t really help us understand where the time value comes
from and why an option is worth more than it can be exercised for today.
So why on earth would anyone pay more for an option than what it
could be exercised for? Let's explore.
As an example let us consider an out of the Money Call option on the
Nifty with 30 days to expiry, which is trading at a premium of Rs.30. Since
the option is Out of the Money, the entire premium of Rs.30 is Time Value.
For the purpose of our illustration let us assume that the spot does not
change during the 30 days of our observation period. Under such
circumstances we will observe, that the option loses value every day bit
by bit due to theta decay which is small at the beginning, but value of
the option rapidly decays as time to expiration approaches near.
As an pure illustration we may observe the following behaviour of option
premium with time:
· For the first 20 days, the option loses 50 paise in value every day so that
the premium reduces to Rs.20.
· In the next 5 days, the option loses Rs.1 in value every day so that the
premium reduces to Rs.15.
· In the last 5 days the option loses Rs.3 in value every day, until it expires
worthless on the last day.
The numbers used are for illustrative purposes only, but they drive home
the point of exponential Theta decay as time to expiration approaches
near.
Gap Risk
Gap risk refers to a company’s share price changing from one level to
another with no trading in between. Usually, such movements occur
when there are adverse news announcements during market close,
which can cause a stock price to drop substantially from the previous
day's closing price.
Gap risk is traditionally associated with equities due to the stock market
closing overnight; this does not allow news to be factored in during
those hours. Caution, must also be taken by investors who hold positions
over the weekend.
Globally on indices gap risks are usually associated with market crashes
like Black Monday in 1987 but on some rare occasions gap risks can be
associated with market opening with a huge gap on the upside.
Examples of such huge gap up days include the Indian market limit up
say in May 2009, post the election results and the Gap up at the end of
2012 in US markets post the resolution of the U.S. budget shutdown crisis
during the Christmas holidays.
Stocks have an equal probability of gapping up or down based on stock
or sector specific material positive or negative news. Typically stocks can
be expected to gap up or down based on earnings announcements (4
times a year). Also sector specific news may also create huge gaps, for
example the news on bank recapitalisation in Oct 2017 led to banking
stocks gapping up by more than 10% at open.
Gaps present a particularly difficult problem for the option writer whose
favourite market condition is a market that is range bound within his
upper and lower strikes.
Now that we have familiarised ourselves with the option concepts and
figured out that the theta decay of options with high time value as a
result of high implied volatility is the source of profits for an options seller
let us now understand below which stocks to select for maximising
profits with our options writing strategy.
Stock Selection
David emphasises very strongly on the liquidity of the options chosen to
implement this strategy. We would also emphasise a selection of those
stocks whose options usually trade with high implied volatility resulting in
a high Time Value as a percentage of spot price.
The best way to analyse liquidity of the entire stock options market is to
download the bhavcopy futures and options market from the NSE wesite
as shown below. The bhavcopy can be downloaded from the “Current
Market Reports / Daily Reports” section under the “Product / Derivatives /
Equity Derivatives” tab on the website. The location of the report is
highlighted in the figure below.
The trader then needs to sort the options for the next month expiry by
volumes traded. We have done such a sorting using the bhavcopy of 27th
June 2018 (one day prior to expiry). The results are shown in the figure
below.
The top 25 traded call options on that day have been shaded in the
table. Reliance calls were the top traded calls on that day, followed by
Tata Motors, TCS, ICICI Bank, Jubilant Foods, Tata Steel, Maruti Axis Bank,
Sun Pharma & SBI.
The trader looking to implement his option writing strategy must restrict
his shortlist to options on these stocks only given the liquidity conditions
prevailing on that day. Interestingly, the calls that top the high volume list,
are mostly from high beta stocks whose options also exhibit high implied
volatility, and therefore have a relatively higher time value as a
percentage of spot, compared to options which are thinly traded.