Vertical Spread – Getting Wall Street To Cry ‘Uncle’
To generate consistent cash-flow from the trading markets with out having to 'guess' or know near term market direction, there are a variety of diff...
To generate consistent cash-flow from the trading markets with out having to ‘guess’ or know near term market direction, there are a variety of different option techniques that option investors can use.
Some of these different strategies include the calendar spread, the butterfly spread, the diagonal spread, the iron condor, and the , also known as the .
The vertical spread is actually a very important and core strategy that is found in many if not all option strategies – including the ones just mentioned. As an example of this, look at the iron condor. This strategy is simply just two vertical spreads – one placed above where the stock being used is trading at – and one below.
The butterfly position is also comprised of vertical spreads. The lower half portion of the butterfly spread is simply a vertical spread – as is the top half. Same goes with the iron butterfly. This trade also is built from verticals – a call vertical and a put vertical.
These positions can be constructed using either call options as well as put options. These may have different names attached to them to help differentiate them – such as bull put spread, bear call spread, etc – however – they are all vertical spreads.
Here is a hypothetical example of a bear call vertical spread…
Sell 5 RIMM 50 Call Purchase 5 RIMM 50 Call
The vertical spread in the example above is a bearish position. Our hypothetical trader who placed this trade believed that RIMM would be moving lower – or staying in it’s general vicinity on the chart.
Some might think that because we are using calls this should be a bullish position, however this is not the case since we are selling the option that is closer to money, hoping to capture the time premium in the event that the stock moves down.
As long as the outlook on this trade is correct and RIMM stays where it is at or heads downwards, this trade will ‘win’ and the initial credit received when the trade was first placed will become the profit.
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