Butterfly Spreads

Animal terms and animal references are prominent among Wall Street slang terms. Here’s a look at bulls and bears, hawks and doves, cats and dogs, sheep and pigs, and even black swans and unicorns.

Your risk-management strategy could decide whether you survive the next market turn. If you don’t have a trading plan in place, here are some ideas to help you get started.

Diversification isn’t just about stocks, bonds, and cash. When hedging risk for an options portfolio, think price, time, and volatility.

A long butterfly spread is typically initiated with a debit. Learn how to turn it into a broken wing butterfly by adjusting one of the wings of the spread.

With many options trading strategies to choose from, how do you find the right one? Consider a three-step process to help with your decision.

Options straddles and strangles are a way for advanced traders to get long or short exposure to volatility (vega), but the volatility needs to be weighted against time decay (theta). Here are the basics.

When faced with high volatility, many options traders turn to these five strategies designed to capitalize on elevated volatility levels.

Traders tend to equate high volatility with fear. But volatility can also mean possible trading opportunities. So, instead of avoiding high volatility, learn to use it in your options trading.

There's no way to predict bear markets. Each one is different from the next. But these options trading strategies can prepare you for unexpected market events.

A small trading account shouldn’t stop you from trading like traders with large accounts. Here are three options trading strategies to let you trade lower-priced stocks with similar risk/return as more expensive stocks.

Vega can show you how much the dollar value of an option changes for every one percentage point change in volatility. But traders often confuse vega with volatility. Knowing the right way to use vega can help you come up with an options trading strategy.

Calendars and butterfly strategies may look similar but they have their differences. Why would you choose one over the other?

Maybe volatility is low and you believe a breakout is about to happen. But you don’t know which direction price will move. Or maybe you believe the markets are high and you don’t know when they might fall. What options strategies could you trade?

The sensitivity of option prices to changes in time, volatility, and the price of the underlying are commonly referred to as “Greeks.” As you prepare for earnings season, here's an overview.

The sensitivity of option prices to changes in time, volatility, and the price of the underlying are commonly referred to as “Greeks.” Here is an overview of

How to tweak a butterfly when you have strong directional bias, time to expiration is short and you want to squeeze as much as you can out of your position.

Explore synthetics in your option trading, especially with butterfly spreads, to potentially save money regardless of how your trade turns out.

Use volatility to pick an options strategy to speculate on a given direction, rather than to replace fundamental analysis and charts to determine potential.

Turn conventional investing wisdom on its head and don't do what countless others have tried before you. Good habits and knowing what not to do are a must.

Our resident guru explains the deal with short-term butterflies, hard-to-borrow stocks, and (ahem) “cleansing” techniques.

You may have heard that trading is a giant conspiracy by the "1%" who make all the money. In truth, the market doesn't care. Here are some practical rules.

There's a camp of traders who think a stock's next move is about as predictable as a coin toss. Just take your stock-picking hat off for a moment and focus.

Option strategies for more potential profit, using undefined-risk trades that draw roots from their defined-risk cousins.