Trading Options at Expiration: Strategies and Models for Winning the Endgame

On the third Friday of every month, equity and index options expire. As that moment approaches, strange market forces and price distortions arise: behaviors that have been little understood by investors, until now. In this book, leading options trader and innovator Jeff Augen illuminates those behaviors and provides specific, proven strategies for profiting from them. Investors who master these strategies won't just be able to generate exceptional profits: they can do so with only one or two days of market exposure each month. Until now, the few investors who have understood this opportunity have either kept the information confidential, charged high prices for consulting or subscription services, or trade privately for hedge funds. In this how-to guide, Augen explains the opportunity, and shows exactly how to take advantage of it. You'll learn why traditional option pricing calculations, based on volatility and time decay, break down when options are about to expire. Augen explains why this inevitably leads options to be mispriced during the final few days. Next, he shows exactly how to exploit this situation, by structuring positions that take advantage of these price distortions to deliver outstanding profits with very little risk. Augen's strategies are direction-neutral: they don't rely on your ability to pick stocks. Best of all, Augen's trades return anywhere from 40% at the conservative end to 300% at the high end, all for one day of investing per month.