Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Iron Condor, Elegant Bird Or Trading Strategy?

By Walter Fox

Iron Condor in the trading business is a stock option with two vertical spreads. The Bull Put Spread and Bear Call spread are not kung fu techniques, they are spreads that have the same expiration date. The Iron Condor is a commonly used strategy that puts the Bull and Bear spreads as the same as a call spread.

Understanding day trading requires that the trader must be familiar with the terms associated with the Iron Condor. Profit to loss graphs are the definition of the Iron Condor. It is an analogy to its counterpart in animal life. The graph is very similar to a condor with spread wings and very wide. The Iron Condor consists of two parts, the inner options (The condor's body) and the outer options(The wings).

Positioning of the spread is where the origin of Iron orginated. Spot pricing is placed abroad the underlying item. The item consist of a spread that is vertical and below the above spread. Many strategies adopt this technique, but because the strategies are a bit different is what defines the Iron Condor strategy.

The short and long Iron Condor are two variations in options trading that are demonstrated below. Short Iron's approach are buying long options for the inner body. The strikes are called out of the money strikes. While buying long options, the trader is able to sell options for the outer wing as well.

The Long Iron Condor varies as it has a slight difference from the Short Iron Condor. The trader buys options from the outer wings and sells the options to the inner body. A bit of a reversal, however these are also out of the money strikes.

In adopting the Iron Condor, you may reap its positive benefits. A helpful benefit is the Iron condor has the same benefits and margin perquisites as a single vertical spread. The gains are a potential profit from double net credit premiums.

Another advantage is that further transaction charges can be prevented by letting the options contracts to expire. This is a direct result from the positioning of the spot price of the underlying line being between the inner strikes near the tail of the option contract.

Iron Condor's great benefits, is a technique that is commonly used in day trading today and taught to students in business schools across the country. With slight tweaks from other condor type trading techniques, The Iron Condor has greater advantages to advanced encounters where the buyer has multiple options opened up to an advanced trader.

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