Subject: Re: Buying Long Dated Calls
Elan tends to be very patient. I'm not, I just keep moving the limit 5 cents until it fills, about as quickly as I can type. To me it seems that the market maker (algo) has a price at which he/she/it will trade, and I'm just trying to find out what that is. I don't hope for the underlying to cause it to move towards my limit, since it's just as likely to move away.

I'm not really any more patient than you. My trading is always a list of five Buy to Open calls and five Sell to Close calls. I cycle through the whole list before going back to the top, so it takes a few minutes between limit moves on each of the options. I've also stopped raising my buy limits one tick (5c or 10c) at a time. Instead I start above the bid by 10% of the spread, and I raise the limit by 10% of the remaining spread gap with each move. So I guess I'm the less patient one. :-) I also recalculate the number of contracts to buy with each move, because I try to buy a pre-determined dollar amount and the trade size may be reduced as my offered price increases.

Elan