Marty Kearney, Senior Staff Instructor, The Options Institute
Marty Kearney is the author of the new course LEAPS Trading Strategies: Powerful Techniques for Options Trading Success, co-author of Understanding LEAPS, and a contributing author of Options: Essential Concepts and Strategies.
Marty began his long association with the CBOE when he became an independent market maker early in 1981. Marty traded equity options full time on the trading floor until 1992 and periodically thereafter until 1996.
In early 1992 he became a founding partner and Registered Options Principal of PTI Securities L. P., a member firm of the CBOE. Marty’s responsibilities at PTI included development and implementation of hedging and trading strategies using listed options for PTI’s institutional clients as well as PTI’s retail investors. Marty authored PTI’s weekly strategy letter for over four years, and composed the daily comments on the PTI website, which he helped develop.
He has been a regular contributor to many news services including Reuters, Group W, The CBS Radio Network, Derivatives Week, Barron's, Fortune, Ticker magazine, Stock Futures and Options, CNBC, Bloomberg, NPR and others. Marty served on various committees at the CBOE, including the Arbitration Committee from 1984 to 1996. Prior to joining the CBOE Marty was a marketing director for NCR Corporation. Marty is a graduate of St. Mary’s University (MN), BS, 1971, and pursued his MBA at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. In 2006 he completed a 3-year SII/SIA program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
At The Options Institute his duties include helping brokers develop new business with conservative option strategy such as covered- writing and portfolio hedging. He also trains brokerage firms’ compliance department staff.
Books by Marty Kearney:
Session Info: Marty Kearney
Covered Calls Inside and Out
Friday 8:00 - 9:30 am
Writing covered calls is one of the most popular option strategies, and, yet, it is frequently misunderstood. This session will clear up the misperceptions and demonstrate the proper use of this strategy. This session will also discuss strategy mechanics, standard return calculations, and planning for both “good” and “bad” outcomes.
Credit Spreads and Iron Condors
Saturday 9:30- 11:00 am
In volatile markets, “selling premium with limited risk” is an attractive alternative to selling uncovered options. This session reviews how credit spreads work and the factors to be considered when choosing strike prices and expirations. The construction of an Iron Condor position and the appropriate market expectations that lead one to this strategy are also discussed.
Long Stock with Ratio Call Spread
Saturday 11:00 am- 12:30 pm
Option positions combined with stock positions open a new range of possibilities for both conservative and aggressive investors and traders. The ratio call spread added to a long stock position is a unique strategy with an interesting payoff structure. This session delves into the nuances of this little-known strategy.
Session Info: Peter Lusk
What a Beginner Needs to Know about Planning Option Trades
Friday 10:30 am - 2:30 pm
Option prices do not behave like stock prices. Newcomers to options, therefore, need to understand how changing stock price, changing time and changing volatility might impact an option’s price. Only with this knowledge can traders develop realistic expectations about how and why option prices change the way they do.
Motivations for Trading Debit Spreads
Friday 1:00 - 2:30 pm
Are you worried about time erosion or declining volatility? Are you looking for a potentially high return strategy in a sideways trading market? Debit spreads—both bull and bear—might be just what the trading doctor orders.
Trading Volatility with VIX Options
& Futures
Friday 4:00 - 5:00 pm
Futures and options on CBOE’s proprietary volatility index (VIX) have truly unique characteristics and price behavior. This session discusses what you need to know to trade these contracts.
Session Info: Jim Bittman
The Basics of Options
Friday 9:00 - 10:30 am
Trading options is often compared to learning a new language. Hear definitions of all the basic terms and see how to draw profit and loss diagrams, which reveal how strategies work, when they make and lose money and where they break even.
Unique Uses of Index Options
Friday 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Whether you want to protect your retirement portfolio or speculate on market direction, there are many differences between cash-settled options on indexes and traditional options on stocks and ETFs. Hear about the differences— including potential tax advantages—and how to plan your strategies accordingly.
Risks and Rewards of Time & Diagonal Spreads
Saturday 1:30 - 3:00 pm
For experienced option traders who are looking for a short-term market-neutral strategy that offers potentially high percentage profits with small dollar risk, time spreads might be the answer. Three different ways of trading time spreads, entering spread orders, and price behavior of time spreads are discussed in this interactive session.