Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc, ALNY, stock, put spread

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALNY) : Put Spreads and Earnings

Date Published: 2023-05-22

Author: Ophir Gottlieb

Disclaimer

The results here are provided for general informational purposes from the CMLviz Trade Machine Stock Option Backtester as a convenience to the readers. The materials are not a substitute for obtaining professional advice from a qualified person, firm or corporation.

Preface

Selling puts is a common option strategy during a bull market, but it turns out that looking at a lower risk put spread, and being rather clever in how we treat earnings, yields powerful results in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALNY) . More urgently, if we do not look at this approach, we would likely miss some worthy short put spread opportunities and incorrectly identify them as losers. This is one of those cases.

STORY
There is a lot less 'luck' involved in successful option trading than many people know, and it's not about guessing stock price direction. Let's review this phenomenon right now for ALNY. Let's first examine a two-year back-test of a short put spread strategy implementing these rules:

* Trade monthly options (roll the trade every 30-days).
* Avoid earnings
* Test short put spreads for two-years

Here's how to implement this quickly in the back-tester:



If we do this test, we find that the best short put spread to employ is the 50 delta, 10 delta put spread.

RESULTS

If we do a short put spread in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALNY) over the last two-years but always avoid earnings we get these results:

Sell 50 Delta Put, Buy 10 Delta Put
* Trade Frequency: 30 Days
* Always Avoid Earnings
Gross Gain:		$12,865
Gross Loss:		-$10,931
Short Put Spread Return:		55.4%
Stock Return:		37.9%
Out-performance:		17.5%

The results above reveal two critical pieces of information. First, we see a strong performing short put spread with a 55.4% return. But, just as important, we also see that the 55.4% return in the short put spread considerably out-performs Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc stock over the last two-years, which hit 37.9%.

Altogether we're looking at a 17.5% out-performance while taking less risk than owning the stock outright and always avoiding earnings risk.

GOING FURTHER
While out-performing the stock and avoiding the risk of earnings is a powerful implementation of a short put spread, there's even more going on here. We can repeat this back-test but this time examine only trading earnings. Specifically, we open our short put spread two-days before earnings, let the earnings event occur, and then close the position two-days after earnings.

Here's how easy the test is. We simply click the appropriate buttons.:



Now we examine the results for that same 50, 10 delta short put spread.

Sell 50 Delta Put, Buy 10 Delta Put
* Trade Frequency: 30 Days
* Only Trade Earnings
Gross Gain:		$0
Gross Loss:		-$0
Short Put Spread Return:		%

Now we see explicitly the impact of avoiding earnings. Holding the short put spread position in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALNY) through earnings under-performed the stock and certainly under-performed a short put spread that avoided this risk. In fact, our strategy to avoid earnings beat the strategy held only during earnings by a whopping 55.4%. The reality is that it's remarkably easy to overlook this implementation without diving just a little deeper than the standard option analysis.

CLARITY
For an explicit demonstration we chart the stock returns, the short put strategy with earnings and the one that avoids earnings, below.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc Stock
and short Put Spread Returns %

We can explicitly see the out-performance in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc by being methodical in our approach and in this case avoiding the risk of earnings.

TRADING TRUTHS
When we take the time to go through this analysis, which really isn't very hard with the right tools, this approach with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ALNY) reveals that this ethereal concept of 'options expert' has been made far too complicated and even intangible. Below, we go the final step (with a video).



WHY THIS MATTERS
When we wrote that there's actually a lot less 'luck' and a lot more planning in successful option trading than many people know, this is what we meant.

It's not about trying to guess which stocks will go up or down.

What the back-tester allows us to do is find calm, low stress stocks or ETFs (like SPY, QQQ, etc) and find the option strategies that have created a high percentage of winning trades, gaining profitability slowly, while avoiding unnecessary risks -- specifically, avoiding earnings.

In a five minute video, your entire view of the options world and what people mean when they say 'expert trader' will be turned upside down - to your advantage.
Tap here to see the CML Pro option back-tester.

Thanks for reading, friends.

Risk Disclosure
Trading futures and options involves the risk of loss. Please consider carefully whether futures or options are appropriate to your financial situation. Only risk capital should be used when trading futures or options. Investors could lose more than their initial investment.

Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. The risk of loss in trading can be substantial, carefully consider the inherent risks of such an investment in light of your financial condition.

Please note that the executions and other statistics in this article are hypothetical, and do not reflect the impact, if any, of certain market factors such as liquidity and slippage.