Trading Options at Expiration: Strategies and Models for Winning the Endgame

Jeff Augen

Mar 2009 · FT Press

About this ebook

Equity and index options expire on the third Friday of each month. As that moment approaches, unusual market forces create option price distortions, rarely understood by most investors. These distortions give rise to outstanding trading opportunities with enormous profit potential. In Trading Options at Expiration: Strategies and Models for Winning the Endgame, leading options trader Jeff Augen explores this extraordinary opportunity with never-before published statistical models, minute-by-minute pricing analysis, and optimized trading strategies that regularly deliver returns of 40%-300% per trade.

You’ll learn how to structure positions that profit from end-of-contract price distortions with remarkably low risk. These strategies don’t rely on your ability to pick stocks or predict market direction and they only require one or two days of market exposure per month. Augen also discusses:

· Three powerful end-of-cycle effects not comprehended by contemporary pricing models

· Trading only one or two days each month and avoiding overnight exposure

· Leveraging the surprising power of expiration-day pricing dynamics

If you’re looking for an innovative new way to reignite your returns no matter where the markets move, you’ve found it in Trading Options at Expiration.

“Learn and profit from Jeff Augen’s book: It clearly explains how to take advantage of market inefficiencies in collapsing implied volatility, effects of strike price, and time decay. A must-read for individuals who are options oriented.”

--Ralph J. Acampora, CMT, Director of Technical Analysis Studies, New York Institute of Finance

“A fantastic, insightful book full of meticulously compiled statistics about anomalies that surround option expiration. Not only does Augen present a set of effective trading strategies to capitalize on these anomalies, he walks through the performance of each across several expirations. His advice is practical and readily applicable: He outlines common pitfalls, gives guidance on timing your executions, and even includes code that can be used to perform the same calculations he does in the text. A thoroughly enjoyable read that will give you a true edge in your option trading.”

--Alexis Goldstein, Vice President, Equity Derivatives Business Analyst

“Mr. Augen makes a careful and systematic study of option prices at expiration. His translation of price behavior into trading strategy is intriguing work, and the level of detail is impressive.”

--Dr. Robert Jennings, Professor of Finance, Indiana University Kelly School of Business

“This book fills a gap in the vast amount of literature on derivatives trading and stands out for being extremely well written, clear, concise, and very low on jargon--perfect for traders looking to evolve their equity option strategies.”

--Nazzaro Angelini, Principal, Spearpoint Capital

“Instead of considering macro-time strategies that take weeks to unfold, Jeff Augen is thinking micro here--hours or days--specifically the days or hours right before expiration, and harnessing grinding, remorseless options decay for profit. He builds a compelling case for the strategy here. The concept of using ratio spreads plus risk management for as brief a period as one day--open to close--to capture expiring premium is worth the price of admission alone. A superb follow-up to his first book. Must-read for the serious options student.”

--John A. Sarkett, Option Wizard software

Ratings and reviews

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About the author

Jeff Augen, currently a private investor and writer, has spent over 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. He is the author of three previous books: The Option Trader’s Workbook (FT Press 2008), The Volatility Edge in Options Trading (FT Press 2008) and Bioinformatics in the Post-Genomic Era (Addison-Wesley 2005).

Much of his current work on option pricing is built around algorithms for predicting molecular structures that he developed many years ago as a graduate student in biochemistry.