WHAT I'M LOOKING AT NEXT WEEK: MON, EWZ, VIX PRODUCTS, FXEWith VIX at sub-14 levels and without much on the earnings calendar that is ideally playable with options from a premium selling standpoint, next week is likely to be a schnooze in the absence of a broad market volatility pop.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of plays I might consider.
MON: MON announces earnings on April 6th before market open. With an implied volatility rank of 58 and implied volatility of 32, it's not looking all that sexy for premium selling at the moment, with the preferred rank/IV metrics being >70 and >50, respectively. Nevertheless, the run-of-the-mill short strangle is offering up more than 1.00 credit ($100)/contract in premium at the moment, so it might be a worthwhile play (April 15th 81.5/94 short strangle).
EWZ: The Brazil ETF still has a bit of "kick" in it, with implied volatility rank at 72 and implied volatility at 58. For lack of premium selling elsewhere and to offset in part a tested iron fly setup I have on (see Post below), I've dispersed risk by laddering setups in this underlying (short strangles/iron condors) through several expiries, which doesn't tie up much buying power given the price of the underlying.
VIX/VXX: With VIX at these levels, I'm considering loading additional long positions here, although I don't want to go all crazy large at once. My setup of choice has been VXX long-dated diagonals/synthetic longs/poor man's covered calls with the back month long option in the September expiry, which allows me plenty of time to be right without having to leg into and out of, for example, short put verticals repeatedly. This also allows me to "swim with the tide" with the short call, since we're in contango here, which exerts a downward pressure on price (although this also affects the value of the long-dated option in the short term). (See VXX Posts, below).
As a side note, I'm avoiding plays in leveraged products like UVXY and SVXY due to pending SEC regulations that may affect these instruments. Although these regs are mainly focused on 2x and 3x leveraged products, I don't want to be in any leveraged product with a long-term setup whose liquidity and/or viability might be affected by implementation of the regs.
FXE: With the Euro hovering slightly below my sell area (1.14), I'm looking at getting into the Euro proxy FXE with a short play of some kind going forward. However, it may pay to be patient here, since we've have had "dovish gruntings" from the Fed which may put a damper on Greenback strength for a bit of time, as well as some modestly positive ECB data. As compared to spot, I could still potentially pull the trigger on a short FXE setup of some kind here, steering well clear of recent strength areas (e.g., 8/24 "risk off" spike to 114.81 or the Fib line at 116-ish).
