Wanted to start new thread, will see if this works !!

Re: Futures Options/Lee/Trades

Posted By: Lee
Date: Saturday, 22 January 2011, at 9:43 p.m.

In Response To: Re: T-Bond Chart With Bollinger bands/Lee (Trades)

Hi Trades,

That is the conclusion I think I am coming to.

[This started with Ronbo posts when I discovered how little sense the futures options were making to me, and basically how thinly traded they are]

I assumed if I studied them a bit I might see more clearly what is going on, but so far, no luck.

Your comment:

"impossible to find a bias unless it is really lopsided with a high open interest I think."

Was what I thought I might learn to recognize. Or at least be able to see when interest was changing in a given product which should show up in the options activity before you would see it in the daily trading volume of the underlying.

The big problem in trying to "follow" the activity is that the data is only a "snapshot" of the situation when you look.

I have been nicking at doing a "daily snap shot" of the options data, saving to a spread sheet. Will likely have to write a program to boil the data down, and possibly produce a chart of the options vs. the underlying over time.

Your comments reflect what I was coming to, can't yet readily make much sense of it.

One thing though ...

Looking at the March11 Euro Puts for example -- there is substantial open interest way down to 1.1000 and some even below that. BUT, the options currently have NO VALUE until you get down to 1.16 and need 1.23 for a put to be worth $100 at the moment.

So, sort of tells me these things were traded as part of some sort of spread trade/hedge a long time ago when Euro was down around 1.18 back in June 2010.

Anyway, for now, I put it in the "crossword puzzle" category. Some entertainment when I just feel like taking a break and looking at some programming/spreadsheet coding.

Probably should start a new thread. Got a bit off topic in the Tbond thread !!

Thanks, Lee