Are S&P 500 straddle trades as cheap as they seem?

Several commentators, including Cornerstone, are highlighting how cheaply investors can now put on one-week straddle trades, in which they buy 1-week at-the-money put and call options to position for a spot move in either direction. Given that the S&P 500โ€™s five-day high-low range has recently been above 4%, as the second chart shows, a straddle that pays if the market moves more than 1.1% in either direction over a five-day period looks like a decent proposition. However, context matters here. This is a big week for S&P 500 quarterlies and the data show that the average move in the index has not been large during recent earnings weeks. On paper, then, the straddle may not be as cheap as it looks. However, for investors who have a high conviction viewpoint on earnings news, macro developments, or even the unfolding story of the Delta variant, positioning for these via a straddle is relatively inexpensive, especially if they are prepared to trade the intraday moves.

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Capstone does not recommend any trades as we are not a broker dealer. The examples above are presented for illustrative purposes only, showing examples of the type of trades we monitor. There is no guarantee that Capstone will be able to identify and execute similar trades or successfully implement the strategy.

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Harold de Boer

Managing Director, Head of R&D

Transtrend

Harold is the architect of Transtrend’s Diversified Trend Program, responsible for R&D, portfolio management and trading. Harold was born and raised on a dairy farm in Drenthe. And from a young age, he has been intrigued by linking mathematics to the real world around us.

He graduated in 1990 with a Masterโ€™s degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Twente in the Netherlands. In the final phase of his studies, while working on the project that would later become Transtrend, he became fascinated by the concept of leptokurtosis โ€” or โ€˜fat tailsโ€™ โ€” in probability distributions, a topic which has inspired him throughout his career.  

Haroldโ€™s approach to markets is best described as a combination of a farmerโ€™s common sense and mathematics, never losing sight of the underlying fundamentals.