99.9% stocks coverage and a new polished design

99.9% stocks coverage

We are very happy to announce that we have expanded our backtesting universe with 600 new U.S. listed stocks now available on our platform. This change increases our coverage from 99% of traded equity option volume to 99.9%! These new stocks are of course also available in our screening tools such as our Macro, Equities, Put Writing, and Covered Call screens as well as our statistical trading opportunities.

Design updates

Over the last few months, we have been releasing updates to our user interface and design to make our products even easier to use. We’ve already received much positive feedback about these improvements. Please continue to send us your comments and suggestions, and we’ll work diligently to implement them.

Announcing quick and easy options portfolio backtesting

We are excited to announce a new feature which significantly broadens the capabilities of our backtesting tools. Our Backtester provides you with unparalleled insight into the historical performance and risk of a single options strategy. Our new Portfolio view takes these analytics to the next level by allowing you to backtest multiple strategies encompassing a limitless number of trades all from one place.

As an example, in just a few seconds, you can backtest covered calls on a basket of U.S. technology stocks, tweaking strikes and expiries to find the right risk vs. return. You could also quickly overlay equity index hedges such as put options on the S&P 500 and see a side-by-side comparison of historical returns with and without the hedge. The possibilities are unlimited.

Try it now.

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Trading options on this week's earnings releases

We put together the quick table below to help you navigate this week’s major earnings releases. We show the post-earnings stock price moves that are implied by options on each company and also highlight how often options markets were wrong in the past, where stock prices immediately moved more than was implied after earnings.

Click the expected moves below to view the full analysis for each company.

Expected Move Options Wrong Last 6m Chg
Today
Apple 4.1% 30.0% -9.0%
Twitter 10.5% 61.5% +10.2%
Wed.
Facebook 6.2% 41.9% +8.3%
Coke 2.6% 50.0% -2.2%
Boeing 3.3% 60.7% +0.2%
Thurs.
Google 4.7% 47.4% -2.4%
Amazon 7.2% 32.8% +17.8%
MA 3.3% 18.6% -4.4%
Baidu 7.0% 24.3% -17.6%
Fri.
Exxon 3.0% 43.4% +6.9%
UPS 2.7% 56.8% +3.1%

Options backtesting equity curves and histograms

We’re announcing today the addition of equity curves and histograms to our options backtesting results to help you better evaluate and uncover attractive trading strategies.

Our equity curves show cumulative profit/loss for your options backtest and make it even easier to understand your strategy’s historical returns and drawdowns through time. In seconds, you can understand the net trend of your options strategy and whether it would have been profitable historically.

Backtest histograms show the frequency distribution of outcomes to help you quickly discern the historical probabilities of specific profit/loss events. This helps you easily visualize tail events and understand whether your strategy’s historical returns are clustered around certain levels.

Together, these two new backtesting features will help you swiftly optimize and discover options strategies on Volatility.

Options backtesting equity curves and histograms

Systematic options backtesting update

We’ve added the ability to backtest systematic strategies by option moneyness (strike price relative to underlying price). This is particularly useful for evaluating options strategies you trade at precise price levels, such as consistently selling 5% out of the money strangles Choose between option delta or moneyness in Calculation Type settings within Advanced Parameters in the backtester. This update gives you even greater flexibility over your options backtests.