Bøger udgivet af Trading Insights, LLC

Written by Brian Johnson, a professional investment manager with many years of trading and teaching experience, Option Strategy Risk/Return Ratios introduces a revolutionary new framework for evaluating, comparing, adjusting, and optimizing option income strategies. Drawing on his extensive background in option-pricing and on decades of experience in investment management and trading, Brian Johnson developed these tools specifically to manage option income strategies. Unlike crude rules-of-thumb, these revolutionary new tools can be applied to any option income strategy, on any underlying security, in any market environment. Risk and return are timeless concepts in finance and trading, but this is the first time both concepts have been integrated successfully into a consistent approach for managing option income strategies. Option Strategy Risk/Return Ratios is written in a clear, easy-to-understand fashion and explains how to apply risk/return ratios to condors, butterflies, calendars, double diagonals, and even hybrid income strategies. Created especially for investors who have some familiarity with options, this practical guide begins with an examination of option income strategies and is followed by a review of the option Greeks, the building blocks of option risk management. Next, a critique of common adjustment triggers lays the foundation for a detailed explanation of these exciting new tools: option strategy risk/return ratios. Each option income strategy is explained, evaluated, and ranked using these new tools with complete descriptions and graphical examples. The book includes over sixty separate graphs and tables to illustrate how risk/return ratios behave using specific strategy examples in actual market conditions. The risk/return ratios are then used to introduce a new hybrid strategy that combines the best characteristics of the other income strategies. Finally, the last chapter examines practical considerations and prospective applications of these innovative new tools. Not only are the formulas provided for every calculation, but each risk/return ratio is explained intuitively and depicted graphically. For traders who are not mathematically inclined, Option Strategy Risk/Return Ratios also includes a link to an Excel spreadsheet with macros designed to calculate all of the risk/return ratios introduced in the book. About the Author: Brian Johnson designed, programmed, and implemented the first return sensitivity based parametric framework actively used to control risk in fixed income portfolios. He further extended the capabilities of this approach by designing and programming an integrated series of option valuation, prepayment, and optimization models. Based on this technology, Mr. Johnson founded Lincoln Capital Management's fixed income index business, where he ultimately managed over $13 billion in assets for some of the largest and most sophisticated institutional clients in the U.S. and around the globe. He later served as the President of a financial consulting and software development firm, designing artificial intelligence-based forecasting and risk management systems for institutional investment managers. Mr. Johnson is now a full-time proprietary trader in options, futures, stocks, and ETFs primarily using algorithmic trading strategies. In addition to his professional investment experience, he also designed and taught courses in financial derivatives for both MBA and undergraduate business programs. He has written articles for the Financial Analysts Journal, Active Trader, and Seeking Alpha and he regularly shares his trading insights and research ideas as the editor of www.TraderEdge.Net. Mr. Johnson holds a B.S. degree in finance with high honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA degree with a specialization in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Brian Johnson, an investment professional with over 30 years of experience, is the author of three pioneering books on options: 1) Option Strategy Risk / Return Ratios, 2) Exploiting Earnings Volatility, and 3) Option Income Strategy Trade Filters. His new in-depth (80+ page) article, Option Strategy Hedging and Risk Management, presents a comprehensive analytical framework and accompanying spreadsheet tools for managing and hedging option strategy risk. Drawing on his extensive background in option-pricing and on decades of experience in investment management and trading, Brian Johnson developed these practical techniques to hedge the unique and often overlooked risks associated with trading option strategies. These revolutionary new tools can be applied to any option strategy, in any market environment. Option Strategy Hedging and Risk Management is written in a clear, easy-to-understand fashion and explains how to apply market-specific hedging techniques, using several different hedging vehicles. Created especially for readers who have some familiarity with options, this practical guide begins with a review of position sizing, including a detailed analysis of the implicit assumptions and embedded risks that could have disastrous consequences, particularly for option traders. Chapter 2 includes a comprehensive description and analysis of the actual option strategy, position model, and trade rules that are used to create real-world option strategy hedges in the subsequent chapters. This is followed by a thorough explanation and a concrete example of how to use futures to hedge option strategy exit risk. Surprisingly, futures are not well understood in the option community and very few traders employ this simple, effective, and virtually free hedging tool. The next two chapters present a common analytical and hedging framework that is used to identify the most cost-effective hedging solutions for an actual option strategy in a real-world market environment. The process used to identify the lowest-cost hedging solution using actual VIX call options is explained in Chapter 4, followed by the same hedging analysis using put options on the underlying security in Chapter 5. All hedging examples in the article use real-time market prices and actual analytical results. Proprietary research is included in the article to provide validation for the analytical framework. The article was written to be accessible to a wide audience, so very few mathematical formulas are provided in the text. However, several important formulas are included to facilitate the understanding of important concepts, and to provide further research opportunities for inquisitive traders. The article also includes thirty separate graphs and tables to illustrate how the tools can be used in practice. Perhaps most important, Option Strategy Hedging and Risk Management includes a download link to the accompanying Excel spreadsheet with macros designed to perform all of the position sizing and hedging calculations in the article. Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5 all have their own dedicated tabs in the spreadsheet. The data from the article is included in the spreadsheet, which allows the reader to reproduce all of the examples from the article. All of the spreadsheet functions are automated through the use of push-button macros, making spreadsheet operation as simple as possible. Finally, Chapter 6 examines practical considerations and prospective applications of these innovative new tools.

Exploiting Earnings Volatility introduces an innovative new framework for evaluating, optimizing, and trading option strategies to profit from earnings-related pricing anomalies. Leveraging his extensive background in option-pricing and decades of experience in investment management and trading, Brian Johnson developed this inventive approach specifically to design and manage option earnings strategies. In an Active Trader article titled "Modeling Implied Volatility," Mr. Johnson introduced a formula for aggregating discrete volatility measures into a single metric that can be used with conventional option pricing formulas to accurately model implied volatility before and after earnings announcements. The practical application of this formula has profound implications for option trading and strategy development. Exploiting Earnings Volatility is written in a clear, understandable fashion and explains how to use this novel approach to 1) solve for the expected level of earnings volatility implicitly priced in an option matrix, 2) calculate historical levels of realized and implied earnings volatility, 3) develop strategies to exploit divergences between the two, and 4) calculate expected future levels of implied volatility before and after earnings announcements. Furthermore, Exploiting Earnings Volatility also includes two Excel spreadsheets. The Basic spreadsheet employs minimal input data to estimate current and historical earnings volatility and utilizes those estimates to forecast future levels of implied volatility around earnings announcements. The Integrated spreadsheet includes a comprehensive volatility model that simultaneously integrates and quantifies every component of real-world implied volatility, including earnings volatility. This powerful tool allows the user to identify the precise level of over or undervaluation of every option in the matrix and to accurately forecast future option prices and option strategy profits and losses before and after earnings announcements. The Integrated spreadsheet even includes an optimization tool designed to identify the option strategy with the highest level of return per unit of risk. Written specifically for investors who have familiarity with options, this practical guide begins with a detailed review of volatility and an explanation of the aggregate implied volatility formula. A separate chapter provides a conceptual and mathematical explanation of "True Greeks," accurate measures of risk and return sensitivity that reflect the real-world behavior of options. New option Greeks that are specific to earnings announcements are also introduced. Four chapters explain how to use the Basic and Integrated spreadsheets and two chapters document trade examples that use actual market data and analytical results from both spreadsheets to design a unique option strategy to exploit earnings-related pricing and volatility anomalies. The final chapter examines practical considerations and prospective applications of these innovative new tools. This book introduces a new analytical framework that may sound complicated at first, but is really quite intuitive. The formulas presented in the book are limited to basic high-school algebra. Mathematical relationships are also explained intuitively and depicted graphically. Most important, you will not need to perform any of these calculations manually. Exploiting Earnings Volatility includes a link to Excel spreadsheets that perform all of the calculations described in the book. The unique price and volatility behavior of options before and after discrete earnings announcements is an enigma to most option traders, even to many professionals. The aggregate volatility formula is relatively simple, but it has profound implications. When integrated with a real-world volatility model, it offers unique insights into earnings volatility, price behavior, option strategy construction, and prospective value-added opportunities.

Brian Johnson, an investment professional with over 30 years of experience, a former university derivatives professor, and an author of four pioneering books on options, introduces his latest book: Trading Option Volatility. This new in-depth book represents a breakthrough in option valuation, which has profound implications for option strategy design, option and volatility trading, and even for calculating accurate and reliable option risk metrics (Greeks). Drawing on his extensive background in option-valuation and on decades of experience in investment management and trading, Brian Johnson has developed a practical new analytical framework that generates theoretically correct and internally consistent, current and future option prices, volatility index futures prices, and risk metrics (Greeks) - across all term structures of volatilities and all term structures of interest rates. All of the required documentation, formulas, and examples are included to allow the dedicated reader to implement this new framework in practice. This new framework eliminates the invalid and unrealistic constant volatility and constant interest rate assumptions of the Black-Scholes-Merton (BSM) and conventional binomial option models (BOM), correcting the sizable errors that result from these assumptions. Both the BOM and BSM use different interest rate and volatility assumptions to describe the same time period when evaluating different options. This means that current and future option values calculated by the BOM and BSM are incorrect and inconsistent, as are the Greek (risk metrics) values - which rely on these invalid assumptions! Created especially for readers who have some familiarity with options, this practical guide begins with an accessible primer on all aspects of volatility, followed by a two-chapter primer on the binomial options model, followed by a primer on the Black-Scholes-Merton model. Building on that foundation, Chapter 5 provides a comprehensive explanation and detailed examples of the new option valuation and volatility aggregation framework cited above. Chapters 6 and 8, plus the accompanying comprehensive Supplement, execute and document a logical, step-by-step validation plan for all elements of this framework. The remaining chapters provide a wealth of new and practical insights for the volatility trader. You will find it fascinating that the simple, objective trade management strategies of Gamma-Scalping and Portfolio Insurance can be used to solve for the theoretical values and profits of any option or option strategy. Even more important, the Gamma-Scalping strategy can extract the realized value from an option over time, completely offsetting the loss from time decay - in the appropriate realized volatility environment. Evaluating the notorious Portfolio Insurance strategy even provides insights into managing Option Income Strategies. Finally, a number of practical and detailed volatility trade examples are examined in actual market environments. Formulas are included to facilitate the understanding of important concepts, and to provide further research opportunities for inquisitive traders. The book also includes hundreds of graphs and tables to illustrate how the framework and tools can be used in practice. A user-friendly Excel spreadsheet is also included with Trading Option Volatility. The spreadsheet uses actual market data to solve for forward volatilities, which are applied to identify and quantify volatility pricing anomalies in equity index options and volatility index futures contracts. The resulting forward volatilities are also used to calculate structurally-consistent True Vega metrics for ATM options, VIX futures, and their corresponding calendar spreads. All of the spreadsheet functions are automated through the use of push-button macros, making spreadsheet operation as simple as possible.