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Open Positions Manager
Open options positions need to be valued and monitored frequently (eg daily) to take advantage of opportunities presented by both movements in the price of the underlying assets and the passage of time. Frequent monitoring of exposures is also critical to avoid expensive disasters. Not only do you need to revalue your positions but you need to be able to understand your exposure to events such as the market dropping by 10%. Another, often neglected, area is early exercise of American options: to maximise your profit potential it's important to gain a clear understanding of when (if ever) your long positions should be exercised early, and the risks of your short positions being assigned before expiration.
The Open Positions Manager software (OPM) can be used "out of the box" to value and monitor a portfolio of open positions, and to perform "what ifs" and other analyses on the entire portfolio for an individual (private) investor. In its unamended form it should satisfy the requirements of all but the most sophisticated investors. However, in recognition of the fact that every investor is different the application is provided without password protection so it can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of individual investors if required. The Open Positions Manager is suitable for managing investments for
individual private investors; it is not a multi-investor/multi-portfolio
application.
The Open Positions Manager will let you do the following:
A portfolio of all option trades and relevant trades in the underlying assets is maintained by the Open Positions Manager. Individual trades can be grouped into deals by using a deal ID. So, for
example with a covered call, the written call option and the underlying
asset purchase would be assigned the same deal ID so a pay-off diagram could be
produced for the deal by using the 'select by deal number' option.
The portfolio can be revalued using end of day (or as often as required) underlying asset prices. One button click will retrieve on-line underlying asset quotes from Yahoo (most exchanges supported, free of charge) and revalue the portfolio. For real-time pricing (streaming or snapshot equities or options) for you can register or subscribe to the data providers supported by the Finance Add-in for Excel and use the add-in's streaming quotes functions to bring real-time quotes into the Open Positions Manager. Note that no guarantee can be given that stock or other asset price data will
be available from the Yahoo site or that Yahoo will not change the format of
their data without notice in the future.
Position/exposure information is provided for each trade, deal and in total:
Other information provided includes breakeven points, time value remaining,
probability of closing in-the-money, delta and more.
"What if" analysis can be performed on the entire portfolio for changes in
overall market prices (eg "what would be the effect on my overall exposure if the
market were to fall by 10%) and changes in time ("what will my exposure be in two
month's time?")
Pay-off diagrams are produced showing profit at expiration and at "time now". The Pay-off diagrams can be produced by selecting one deal (eg a strangle), by selecting all deals for a specified underlying asset, or by selecting all deals for a specified expiration date. The time to expiration on the pay-off diagram can be varied in small
increments to enable the effects of time decay to be observed. Information
can be viewed in tabular form, including position totals, as well as
graphically.
Position "Greeks", or hedge parameters, can also optionally be superimposed
on the pay-off diagram. For example the delta of the entire position -- the
equivalent stock position, or ESP -- can be displayed on the pay-off diagram
along with the profit data. Traders wishing to hedge their positions can
then see the number of shares they would have to buy/short to achieve
neutrality -- for the range of underlying asset prices shown on the pay-off
diagram, and for all dates to expiration -- in the context of the profit
information. Similarly for the other "Greeks". The Open Positions Manager also produces
a summary by underlying asset of total profit and loss and position
Greeks. Position delta and position gamma can be optionally beta
weighted to enable their aggregation into a total portfolio risk
position. Without beta weighting position Greeks cannot be summed across
multiple underlying assets. Beta weighting allows position Greeks
to be summed and expressed as delta and gamma units of the reference
index for overall portfolio hedging purposes.
The Open Positions Manager includes a powerful hedging facility for traders wishing to hedge their total positions using either static or dynamic hedging schemes. All trades for a specified underlying asset -- which could include one or many "strategies" -- are collated to produce net position values and hedge ratios. Traders can then select the type of hedging required (delta, delta-gamma, vega, delta-vega, or delta-gamma-vega) and whether the hedging trades should include only the underlying (for delta hedging) , only nominated options, or a combination of trades in the underlying and options trades. The Open Positions Manager will then automatically calculate the trades in the nominated options and/or underlying required to achieve the target position "greeks". The original position, the suggested hedging trades, and the new position are brought together to provide a complete before and after picture of position quantities, values and hedge parameters. On-line demo of position hedging
An analysis of optimal early exercise points can be produced, showing for all American options in the portfolio the underlying asset price/date combinations where early exercise is optimal (the "early exercise threshold"). The analysis also shows the probability of each early exercise threshold being reached. The range of underlying asset prices considered and the number of days into
the future can be specified by the user. The analysis is produced using the early
exercise object from the Excel add-in.
The Finance Add-in for Excel , version 6.1 or
later, must be installed before using the Open Positions
Manager. System requirements
for the Finance Add-in for Excel.
Download Open Positions Manager. |
