Thursday, November 27, 2008

Iron Condor, The Day Traders Advanced Technique

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.

If you are an expert in day trading, you will be familiar with these terms. A newcomer, you will need to learn and master these techniques to help you become successful. The Iron Condor term resembles a condor, with tis wide wing span. Inner options are like the condors body and the outer body resembles the wing span.

The "Iron" term originates from the position of the spread. The position is placed across the spot price of the underlying instrument. The underlying instrument consists of one vertical spread below and above the current spot price. Other acondora trading strategies have the same basic shape but these are played differently.

The Short Iron Condor and Long Iron Condor are two examples of trading options. Traders who practice buying and trading short options for the inner body are using the Short Iron Condor technique. This approach consists of trading and buying long options in contracts for the body strikes. This is called out of the money striking. Also, with the purchasing of long options, the trader will also be able to sell contracts for outer wing strikes.

The long Iron Condor approach varies slightly from the short Iron Condor technique. In this strategy to learn to day trade, the trader will buy long options contracts from the outer (wings) strikes. The trader then sells the options contracts for the inner (body) strikes. These strikes are out-of-the-money puts and calls, as observed in the short Iron Condor technique.

The Iron Condor approach has many advantages. One of the most important advantages is that the Iron Condor has the same initial and maintenance margin requirements as the requirements for a single vertical spread. This results in a potential profit from two net credit premiums.

A second incentive is that transaction fees can be avoided by allowing the options in a contract to expire. This happens because the position of a the price of the underlie line is close to the inner strikes near the tail end of the option.

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. - 16003

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