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Futures Option Spreads � Delta Neutral Trading
By David Rivera
There are many ways to trade futures option spreads. One way is to trade spreads that can profit from time decay. You can sell options which you believe will lose more time value than the options you buy.

Another way is to buy and sell options based on their deltas. Some of these trades are called delta neutral trades. Delta neutral trades are option trades in which the total delta of all the options is Zero. At the money options have a delta of 50.

If you buy an at the money call, you will have a

delta of +50.

If you sell an at the money call, you will have a

delta of -50.

If you buy an at the money put, you will have a

delta of -50.

If you sell an at the money put, you will have a

delta of +50.

Basically, the deltas will be determined by where you want the market to go. Think of it this way: If you sold an at the money call option, where would you want the market to move to? You would like it to go lower. So, you would have a delta of -50.

If you look at most at the money options, you will find that they are usually not at 50. That is because they are not exactly at the money. We still refer to these as the at the money options because they are the ones that are the closest to being there. It might have a delta of 47 or 53.

If you purchased one at the money call and one at the money put, you would be delta neutral. The call will have +50 deltas and the put will have -50 deltas. The total is zero. This is a very simple delta neutral trade.

Another delta neutral trade is a ratio back spread. An example of this trade would be to sell an option that is at the money and buy a greater number of out of the money options. You might sell one call option at the money (delta -50) and buy 2 call options out of the money (delta +25 each). You would be delta neutral. You would want to put this on for a credit or

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