Options Trading - Quick simple question - I'm a newbee

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Options Trading - Quick simple question - I'm a newbee

posted

All, I really don't have a lot to say. I'm new and I am pretty excited to join your community.

I had one simple question and I am sure there is a wealth of information on this site, but I figure I'd ask straight out and see what comes back.

Can I formulate an Options Trade - For hypothetical and simplicity I only want to do "Call" Options.

Can anyone show me a simple way to structure an options trade for say Apple?

At X Price, buy this much - Once i hit x percent, sell it, before X date (Strike date).

I'd appreciate any feedback you might have, even if it's "GET OFF OUR SITE".

Thanks much

JB

5 responses

Morten Sorensen

As of now Quantopian only offers equity trading. However, I think it would be fairly easy to hack something together for the sake of backtesting.

For simplicity, say it's a European call, I guess you could calculate the Black-Scholes price and buy at time i. Then down the line at e.g. time i+90 (days) you could see if you would get a positive payoff, i.e. max(S-K, 0) > 0 and in that case submit an order.

Actually Pandas can be used to fetch options prices from Yahoo! Finance (see http://python4econ.blogspot.hk/2013/02/building-stock-options-historical.html), but I don't think it's possible to get historical option prices anywhere for free. Thus, you might have to stick with your Black-Scholes price (even though the option you calculate might not be available in real life).

This gives me a good lead Morten. Much appreciated.

siddharth bhatia

Optionstack.com, but the paid version is quite pricey for individual/ beginner quants

Is trading in options included now?

Stringing together an option price series is no simple task. And calculating simulated option prices is pointless unless you can approximate the volatility smile. I have quite a few jupyter notebooks on my website and my gist on both these topics. Plus a couple of systems.

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The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian.

In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.