Friday, October 1, 2010

Hidden Risks In Options Trading

Option traders and investers may sometime be taking risk they not even aware of. These risks appear when the unusual happens in the stock market. I learned about the case I am about to describe back in May 2010, after the flash crash.

 There was a guy who lost his whole account, and even more due to one little "mistake". He had his option positions (spreads with limited risk that are covered), and other non option positions in the same option trading account.

The market moved fast, and he had a margin call, which professional brokers meet in real-time. The robot took some of his option positions off , and that triggered a series of margin calls because the removal of one option position made things worse from a margin point of view. Since the market was moving fast and bid/ask spreads were large, the bid/ask spreads were expensive, and the random manner in which the liquidation was made led to the closure of all positions, and the net effect was that he has lost his whole account, and even may have owned money to the broker. The trading account went from something like +10K to a minus number.

So one should be careful about this part, in case one did not think about it.

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