Buying and Selling Volatility

To make a profit, most individual investors and fund managers are forced to take a view on the direction of the price of something. The traditional investment strategy is to study all the aspects of the market place and decide on the value of the instrument under study. If the instrument is cheap, you buy, and if it is expensive, you sell. The traditional view taken is looking at only one dimension of a price sequence - the direction. Options can allow investors to completely ignore the direction of the price and to concentrate on the second dimension - the volatility of the price. It is possible to construct a portfolio containing a given stock and stock options and be completely indifferent to the direction of the price whilst profiting from the volatility of the price. This text explains, with the use of diagrams, how one can profit from the volatility (or lack of it) of the price of an instrument, irrespective of the direction of the price. It discusses the connection between volatility and options without recourse to complex maths.