Dividend capture by buying SPY and shorting IVV?

If your devious dividend capture plan involves you hedging against SPY’s price movements by selling IVV short until after SPY goes ex-dividend you can forget about it. The IVV (Barclays Global) price doesn’t drop by SPY’s dividend amount on SPY’s ex-dividend date. It continues to track the S&P 500 until it goes ex-dividend a few days later. Your master plan will net out with you …

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Trading puts in an IRA account

Most IRAs will allow buying puts (assuming you get the appropriate approvals), even if you don’t own the underlying in the account.     This opens up the field for speculative uses of options, in addition to the buttoned-down protective put strategies. Recently I had deep in the money puts and OTM covered calls on SPY in my IRA account.   As expiration approached I …

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Weekly options for the masses–SPY, QQQQ, IWM, DIA and others

Anyone that trades options knows that the pace quickens the last few days before expiration.   The delta (the change in option price relative to the underlying)  for the ATM option is still around .5, but instead of gradual changes for the deltas on the strikes in / out of the money, the curve starts resembling a step function, going from zero for out-of-the-money, to …

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SPY dividend capture–June 2010

I bought SPY at 111.64, and sold-to-open SPY 108 June-30 expiration calls at 4.08 for a net investment (debit) of  107.58.     I used the quarterly SPY options because I could go considerably deeper in the money with the calls and still get a premium that is close to the likely SPY dividend for this quarter  (around $0.50).   Schwab does not appear to …

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