Oz Options-Volatility Analysis

Hi folks,

As part of easing into Aussie options I want to go through some of the things I looked at with US options. Analyze some stocks and collectively put on some dummy trades....hopefully to everyones benefit.

The Oz options market is different and I am going through a brand new learning curve.

So what I want to do is put in my $0.02 and see what you all think, and you can put in your $0.02 and see what come out.

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I'll explain a few things for non option traders and make it basic so the most people can follow along, but I'll presume at least some knowledge.

I'm a firm believer in considering volatility first before considering the strategy, whether directional or not.

So what is volatility? Volatility is simply how much an instrument (stock in this case) bounces around in the market path.

In the options market their are two types of volatility:

1/ Statistical or Historical Volatility (SV) - This is the actual measured volatilty over a specific time frame in the immediate past.

2/ Implied Volitility (IV)- Is the markets view of the possible volatility in the immediate future. Basically it's a guess.

SV looks back, Iv looks forward.

How is it measured?

SV is measured in various ways (standard deviation, Average true range etc) but option SV is measured in a specific way. The lookback period is usually 20 trading days and expressed as an anualized percentage. The metamumble (or amibroker) equation is:

(Stdev(Log(C/Ref(C,-1)),20) * Sqrt(252))*100

IV is an input into the "Black Scholes Option Pricing Model" (or similar) and is used as an input to create a price for an option (along with price of underlying, strike, expiry etc), or it is reverse calculated using algebra, when a price in the market place has already been set by supply and demand.

Re: Trading Aussie Options

Lets look at a chart of statistical Volatility on CBA.

The current value is 9.86%, but the obvious thing here is that it tends to oscilate from as low as 7% to around 20% in this time. That tells us something already and may be useful in trading. But more on that later.

Each instrument will have its own range of values depending on the native volatility of that stock. Biotechs will tend to have higher values, whereas mature industrials will have lowre values. This is important to note as it will affect IV and the greeks and must be considered before any strategy is considered.

Re: Trading Aussie Options

Now lets have a look at the chart of Implied Volatility.

The current value is in fact 12.84%. The first thing you will notice is that this Implied Volatility is different from the actual statistical volatility (another important note)... and in the same time period has varied between 11.75% and 15.25%

Re: Trading Aussie Options

Now for the last post this evening, this is the two volatility types plotted together. You should notice some things immediately... have a look and we'll get into it tommorrow or whenever...I'm off to bed :goodnight

Re: Trading Aussie Options

WayneL

As part of easing into Aussie options I want to go through some of the things I looked at with US options. Analyze some stocks and collectively put on some dummy trades....hopefully to everyones benefit.

Click to expand...

Agreed, placing of actual, or paper trades is always a good idea.
Successful Options traders, if you believe the press, are even less common than successful stock traders.

IV is an input into the "Black Scholes Option Pricing Model" (or similar) and is used as an input to create a price for an option (along with price of underlying, strike, expiry etc), or it is reverse calculated using algebra, when a price in the market place has already been set by supply and demand.

Click to expand...

I thought Black-Scholes was long gone, and had been superceded by Tri-nominal trees due to the failure of Brownian theory.

2/ Implied Volitility (IV)- Is the markets view of the possible volatility in the immediate future. Basically it's a guess.

Click to expand...

Interesting, but I thought technical analysis, via determinism, contained valid theory regarding the analysis of market information contained in, price, volume, and volatility.

jog on
d998

Re: Trading Aussie Options

ducati916 said:

WayneL
I thought Black-Scholes was long gone, and had been superceded by Tri-nominal trees due to the failure of Brownian theory.

Click to expand...

It's true that a body of work has been done on option pricing since Black and Scholes. It is however still the industry standard, particularly for european style options. The other standard is the cox-rubinstein binomial, and as you mention there are others. These industry standards do not account for leptokurtic distribution, hence the volatility smile...a more advance concept we can get into later.

All contain more complexity than I am interested in exploring, and all I can say is thank God for third party spreadsheets. But as a a trader I don't need to know the intricacies of each model; there are only profound differences when close to expiry, as I understand.

Black Scholes still gives us a workable model, for all intents and purposes.

http://www.asx.com.au/investor/options/getting_started/pricing_models.htm

ducati916 said:

Interesting, but I thought technical analysis, via determinism, contained valid theory regarding the analysis of market information contained in, price, volume, and volatility.

Click to expand...

I don't quite know where you're going with this one but I'll try....

As I've really tried to convey on a number of occasions, I don't view TA as deterministic at all. I've always viewed it at recognising chaos. The options market, as far as I see it, obviously views the market as chaotic as we see this in the IV's of certain stocks, and nearly all stocks at certain times.

But I want to purposefully avoid TA and FA in this thread and instead, stick to "views" of price movement, no matter how they are derived.

Cheers

Re: Trading Aussie Options

WayneL

This thread looks interesting (and educational). Keep it up, mate.

Keeping it simple (for us simple folks) is great.

I agree that discussing the pro's and con's of TA & FA should be left to another thread.

Re: Trading Aussie Options

The next step in analysing volatility is threefold.

1/Comparing IV to SV

2/Determining the "relative" level of IV and coming to a view of the immediate future of IV (whether it is going to go down or up)

3/Considering the "absolute" level of IV

What we are trying to arrive at here, is whether we should be trying to sell options, buy options, or spread.

So lets go ahead and have a look at our CBA volatilities.

1/Comparing IV to SV: The first thing I notice is that apart from the SV spike in aug-sept (this caused by a gap in the market, and apart from the direct consequeces of the actual gap, can be considered artifact) is that IV is consistently higher than SV.

So what does that mean? It means that CBA optiuons are always priced just a bit higher than is warranted by the actual volatility of price movement. In other words, they are more expensive than they should be. This puts the option buyer at a disadvantage. So with this piece of the jigsaw puzzle, we should be leaning towards selling or spreading

2/Determining the "relative" level of IV and coming to a view of the immediate future of IV: We see that IV is actually at a lowish point in it's IV range, not having spent time at this low a level for nearly six months. This means that CBA options are probably at/or nearly as cheap as they are going to get.

This little part of the jigsaw puzzle says that buying could be an appropriate strategy and therefore long vega. Particularly if we believe that IV will revert to the higher levels it has been at recently. But beware IV could go lower and linger at a low level for a while. That's why we need a view of where IV could be going. We look to SV for this. Are we expecting the stock to become more volatile, less volatile or about the same?

3/Considering the "absolute" level of IV - We wnt to look at this because it's important in consideration of the greeks. This part of the puzzle will further determine our buy/sell/spread bias.

Let's face it. CBA is a relatively low volatilty stock. 12-13% (even if it is higher than the SV) is pretty low. This means we will have higher gamma than a higher vol stock and also lower theta (time decay) This is going to favour buying, and certain spreads over others.

Lastly we want to consider how this all fits in with our view of the share price.

My opinion is if your view is directional and expecting a decent move, buy puts or calls, or possibly backspreads.

I would not recomend straddles/gamma trading because of IV being > SV...unless you believe a strong move is imminent.

If not expecting movement then a short strangle/long butterfly or condor would be entirely appropriate...so long as there is a willingness to defend the position.

I don't have a view of how I'd trade this atm but just using this as a random chart to show how I analyze volatilty.

Cheers

Re: Trading Aussie Options

Great thread Wayne - also just wondering which charts you are using to get IV and SV superimposed?

I've found the banks are pretty good for short term directional plays just with long puts or calls - the big 4 all seem to have chronically low IV except around earnings or fast moves. WOW is another one and NWS is currently on the lower end of the IV scale.

Re: Trading Aussie Options

sails said:

Great thread Wayne - also just wondering which charts you are using to get IV and SV superimposed?

I've found the banks are pretty good for short term directional plays just with long puts or calls - the big 4 all seem to have chronically low IV except around earnings or fast moves. WOW is another one and NWS is currently on the lower end of the IV scale.

Click to expand...

Margaret,

I am subscribing to www.premiumdata.net where you can opt for "indicator" data....and plotting in Metacrock. This gives all the IV's plus put/call ratio, a/d line etc.

NWS!!! (nervous laughter) It certainly elicites a certain anount of fear in my psyche. Usually managed to get whacked by it when it was NCP LOL

Re: Trading Aussie Options

hi there wayne,
interesting thread you've started here. quick question- why after all of this analysis,don't you have an opinion on how your going to trade options on this stock? Or are you waiting for the underlying to start making its move first?
not asking for a free recommendation or anything like that(made my play on cba yesterday ), was just after a bit more info on your thoughts on this one.

p.s happy to hear that I'm not the only one who cries like a girl when nws is mentioned

Re: Trading Aussie Options

professor_frink said:

hi there wayne,
interesting thread you've started here. quick question- why after all of this analysis,don't you have an opinion on how your going to trade options on this stock? Or are you waiting for the underlying to start making its move first?
not asking for a free recommendation or anything like that(made my play on cba yesterday ), was just after a bit more info on your thoughts on this one.

p.s happy to hear that I'm not the only one who cries like a girl when nws is mentioned

Click to expand...

heheheh

Re opinion on CBA

I don't want to really go into analysis on this thread, but my "view" is that it's fully priced and may linger around this level until march expiry.

Quite willing to go into more detail in a separate thread

Re: Trading Aussie Options

ok thanks wayne.
Hope you're not too right on that one
I'm sitting pretty so I'm holding for a couple more days yet.
enjoy your afternoon.

Re: Trading Aussie Options

professor_frink said:

ok thanks wayne.
Hope you're not too right on that one
I'm sitting pretty so I'm holding for a couple more days yet.
enjoy your afternoon.

Click to expand...

Professor, I don't have a position, so I hope I'm wrong and it goes well for you

Further to Volatility on Oz stocks, I've noticed some decidedly different charactaristics between the two markets as far as IV is concerned.

I've finally got Metacrash stable with the template I'm using (Amibroker won't do what I want in this regard) so can now post up any chart. So if anyone wants a look at SV/IV plotted together on a particular stock just ask

Back to IV: In the US IV's will basically track SV in most circumstances (apart from pre announcements and suchlike) If IV does vary from SV, it is more likely that IV will swing to wider extremes than SV.

I'm noticing the exact opposite here in Oz. IV's tend to be more stable not really tracking SV swings at all. A typical example is this chart of ANZ below...red line is SV, black line is IV. This is interesting and could be used to advantage.

Re: Trading Aussie Options

Another feature is the chronic overvaluation of the options of some stocks, for instance NWS. IV's are constantly higher than SV's ... a lovely situation for writing options ... or better still short spreads.

This is going to be a great weapon to slay the NWS beast with.:whip

Just observations for now, but will post situations as they arise....

Folks,

Here is an opportunity...NCM

IV is at it's highest level since at least Jan 2004 @ ~40-45%. SV is showing a spike on the chart but is due to a one off price move (announcement based) and contains a deal of artifact. True SV would be about the same as IV.

So Here is an opportunity to sell some options.

Looking at the price chart, we have support at ~$21. The question is, will that hold and will POG, which is holding quite well, underpin this price.

When writing options it it is more useful to determine where you think the price won't go, rather than where you think it will go....much easier analysis

Now, because we have some recent volatility, and POG can really go anywhere, fast, there are unacceptable risks in writing naked options on this baby. Naked puts maybe if you don't mind ending up with the shares.

But I'm inclined more towards credit spreads. Because of the high absolute level of IV, we can get good risk reward charactaristics in a front month spread. An Iron Condor could even be the go.

Thoughts?

(PS I have changed the title of the thread)

here's my opinion wayne- sell the 19.50 and buy the 19. looking at the chart, the support level should hold(at least for awhile!), and with the overall market starting to look a bit toppy(maybe???) the 19.50 should allow enough room for it to play out, and allow you to sleep well(unless your me, then you never sleep well, even when holding cash)

looks like you were right on cba- bailed out early this morning for a small gain. luckily I missed the bloodbath that is happening right now!

Hello
The IV that you have on the chart, how is it created?
Is it the average IV of all calls, or puts and calls, or the IV of just 1 series?
Is that metastock? If it is, how do you go getting the dates to line up in 2 different charts?
In Tradestation data can be charted in an indicator window on the 1 chart.
Thanks Steve

Re: Trading Aussie Options

wayneL said:

Margaret,

I am subscribing to www.premiumdata.net where you can opt for "indicator" data....and plotting in Metacrock. This gives all the IV's plus put/call ratio, a/d line etc.

NWS!!! (nervous laughter) It certainly elicites a certain anount of fear in my psyche. Usually managed to get whacked by it when it was NCP LOL

Click to expand...

Wayne, thanks for the link. I don't have metastock, but apparently their data is compatible with Market Analyst, so will give their free trial a go.

NWS is a tame little duck compared to NCM Not so sure about an iron condor with it's large fluctuations - perhaps a butterfly and make some adjustments as required - but then I don't like too much risk . Will watch with interest to see what you do with it - thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Margaret.

Hi Wayne and Sails

Out of simple curiousity just wondering what hour you predominantly make your move during the day?

Cheers
Happytrader