We see a lot of people who like to follow the herd behavior of selling premium into earnings and trying to pocket the vol drop as the earnings are announced. People often argue selling premium has the edge but edge is only present if limited people are doing it- if everybody out there is following the same- trade structure doesn't have edge anymore then - it is called herd behavior. How you manage the risk for your trade structure is what creates an edge in a trade. I posted yesterday on this forum that options are meant to be sold & not to be sold, which necessarily doesn't imply buying them. But for GOOG yesterday when I looked up IV's across the next six months they were way too low. Meaning there was no edge selling premium for GOOG yesterday. Now if they are not worth selling them - are they priced that low that its worth buying them That's where the tricky analysis comes in Is it cheap for a reason or has the options markets has completely oversold the IV. Second thing I analyzed was how much IV's will drop after earnings release. I calculated Dec IV's will drop by 2.3% after ER. So my IV drop risk was very limited with this strangle. Even though greeks tell you what type of risk your position has , I am always more inclined towards permanent loss of capital. After analyzing my IV drop and theta bleed , I figured, chances of BE on this structure very strong as GOOG on average GOOG moves 6% and for this trade after considering theta bleed and IV loss, I needed GOOG to move only 3.94%- that's what added a lot of margin of safety in this structure. I bought Dec 860/920 strangle for 36.5 yesterday and closed them this morning for 72.20 ( 2 lots only). Even though I am kicking my self for closing it too early - But again my risk management dictates to preserve the capital first and then grow it. Happy this trade worked out pretty good. BTW, I still believe IV's are ridiculously low for GOOG now. There are several other names for which IV are at ridiculous levels as they head into earnings for next several weeks.