Day Trading Options

Description

Today’s equity markets have become a gambling casino where stock prices are often unrelated to the underlying performance of the companies they represent. The result has been the greatest destruction of wealth in history, and long-term investors have been the victims. At the same time, the environment for short-term technical trading has come to be dominated by computerized algorithmic trading systems. Technical traders must now compete with supercomputers that process millions of data items each second and make investment decisions at the individual “tick” level. These systems have completely invalidated many approaches to technical analysis and charting that worked well just a couple of years ago. But many options traders continue to profit in this environment. They enter and exit the market at very specific times with trades that are structured to capitalize on well-characterized pricing anomalies and distortions. Many of these approaches generate more profit in a single month than most investors achieve in an entire year. In Day Trading Options, top options trader Jeff Augen shows exactly how you can use these strategies to generate outstanding profits with minimal risk. You’ll learn new approaches to evaluating option prices by comparing overnight, intraday, and traditional measures of volatility. At the same time, Augen introduces a new charting technique that can be used to spot the beginning and end of a short term trend–often as brief as a few minutes. You’ll discover how this approach can be used to trade planned events and financial news. These new strategies and approaches will help you adapt to the new investing world and allow you to trade profitably regardless of the market’s direction.

Jeff Augen, currently a private investor and writer, has spent more than a decade building a unique intellectual property portfolio of databases, algorithms, and associated software for technical analysis of derivatives prices. His work, which includes more than a million lines of computer code, is particularly focused on the identification of subtle anomalies and price distortions.

Augen has a 25-year history in information technology. As a cofounding executive of IBM’s Life Sciences Computing business, he defined a growth strategy that resulted in $1.2 billion of new revenue and managed a large portfolio of venture capital investments. From 2002 to 2005, Augen was President and CEO of TurboWorx Inc., a technical computing software company founded by the chairman of the Department of Computer Science at Yale University. His books include Trading Options at Expiration, The Option Trader’s Workbook, and The Volatility Edge in Options Trading.

How you can earn remarkable profits right now by trading in very brief time frames!

“As a veteran reader of some 500+ trading and investing books and having interviewed hundreds of authors, I never take the approach that you can believe what you read or hear about how to make money in the market, so I try their theory, system, or ideas. Jeff Augen’s book lays down clear guidelines to his intraday options strategy that I can report were profitable in the style I trade.”

–Vincent M. Rowe, President, Online Trading Academy, Texas

“Augen’s book breaks new ground with an indispensable and unique approach to evaluating option prices in different time frames. It also presents a new charting technique for evaluating very short-term trends lasting just a few minutes–a valuable technique for anyone who follows intraday markets. The statistical analysis and associated discussions around high-frequency trading are especially relevant in the modern financial world, which has come to be dominated by supercomputers and algorithmic trading. No serious stock or option trader should be without this book.”

–Sean Sztern, Alternative Strategies Group, Desjardins Securities, Montreal, Quebec

“Jeff Augen’s work on day trading options pulls the curtain back and reveals insights from the world of very short-term options trading. In doing so, he reveals insights beneficial even for the longer-term option trader. Specifically, Chapter 3 on trading volatility distortions introduces the idea of 3-D implied volatility surfaces. Far from being too advanced, this chapter addresses complex volatility issues in plain English that every option trader can understand. I wholly recommend this book.”

–Steve Lentz, DiscoverOptions

Minimize Your Exposure to Market Risk and Increase Profits by Trading in Very Brief Time Frames

In today’s turbulent markets, traditional trading strategies have failed to provide protection from the rapid and violent changes that have swung the Dow down 330 points one day, up 280 points the next, and down 250 points at the open on the next. Fundamental analysis based on company performance and financial predictions has proven meaningless. Technical traders must now compete with institutional trading programs utilizing supercomputers that analyze and execute trades in millisecond time frames. So, how can a private investor compete in this environment?

In Day Trading Options, expert option trader Jeff Augen shows you how to continue to profit even in these chaotic times. You’ll learn to structure short-term trades that exploit well characterized price distortions and anomalies. You’ll discover a breakthrough technique for utilizing volatility to identify the beginning and end of short-lived trends. And, you’ll gain the knowledge to use this innovative technique to take advantage of financial news and planned events, rather than being at their mercy.

• Abandon outdated trading strategies and conventional “wisdom”
  Minimize your exposure to market risk and increase your profits by trading in very brief time frames and structuring positions that are direction neutral
• Understand why your once-reliable technical analysis and charting techniques are failing
  Explore new statistical evidence to discern how new advances in institutional program trading affect the private investor
• Discover new models for analyzing volatility in different time frames
  Learn to evaluate option prices by comparing overnight, intraday, and traditional measures of volatility
• Learn to identify and exploit short-lived volatility changes
  Use a newly defined charting technique to correctly time trades by identifying the beginning and end of short-term trends

Preface     xiii

Chapter 1  Basic Concepts     1

Chapter 2  New Directions in Automated Trading     35

Chapter 3  Trading Volatility Distortions     81

Chapter 4  Working with Intraday Price Spike Charts     131

Chapter 5  Special Events     157

Index     169

How you can earn remarkable profits right now by trading in very brief time frames!

Additional information