No. of Recommendations: 15
Thanks. What if there have been no option trades at your given strike price in some time?
I suppose as long as there is some bid and ask volume, the bid and ask should be meaningful and you go off of those?
Could you potentially offer a price outside the spread?
A few thoughts---
The volume is meaningless, just ignore it. Same with open interest.
In general, the bid and ask are pretty "real". You can generally sell at the bid and buy at the ask if you wanted to--if it moves against you, it's not usually by that much, except for very obscure equities or if you are trading a whole lot of contracts.
Yes, you can set a limit price outside the spread, but of course it won't execute unless/until the range of the spread moves to encompass your price.
The best way to think of the "current price" of an option is the midpoint between the current bid and current ask. Taken across all trading venues, this is how the "official" daily close price of an option is calculated. The best way to think of the gap between bid and ask is just the frictional cost of trading. Plan on paying half the spread on any given trade--if you do better, think of it as a windfall.
I trade a lot of options, though usually on large caps. Usually there is zero volume the day I trade other than me. I can normally get a fill at 3/4 of the way across the gap. That is, if bid/ask is 10.00 and 11.00, I can usually buy at $10.75 or better using a slowly moving limit, and I can usually sell at $10.25 or better. This rule of thumb fades away with smaller caps, where it's not uncommon to have to pay the full gap.
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 find you can usually shave the gap a LOT more if you trade in the last minute of the day, or even 30 seconds. The market maker algorithms seem to be keen to make a quick small buck at that time. Surprisingly often you can get a fill on the "far side" of the gap. e.g., if bid/ask is 10.00/11.00, sometimes you might be able to buy at (say) $10.10.
As for the general idea of long dated calls, it's the main way I make my living. But as with any stock buying, it works when you are entering the position when the price is attractive (preferably more attractive than usual) and you have solid reasons to believe it will be higher at a later date. And the implied interest rate in the option price is not prohibitive. I have some Berkshire calls that I've owned for ages, rolling them from time to time, which I sold today. Great firm, but the price seems a little bit ahead of itself at the moment.
Jim
