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Trade idea that I published to my shower thoughts channel: Korean Index volatility arbitrage and taking advantage of Black-Scholes models. $EWY long options seem mispriced. This is Blackrock's Korea Index, which is majority memory (Samsung Electronics, Sk Hynix). The stock swings 2-5+% a day, and is up 136.25% 1Y, despite priced like a normal index IV. Samsung is volatile. SK Hynix is volatile (eg. 65% - 80% est). But the combination of the two through the index is priced way less than both low beta $GOOGL (37.33%) and $AMZN (39.12%) at ~32% IV. I've been watching $EWY for a bit and it does look volatile. As for pricing my guess is MMs priced in IV based on historical averages (5-10 years), where the Korean index was completely flat. And were expecting calls 2 years out to revert to the mean. But this volatility should be the new norm as markets price in the new memory supercycle (eg. $TSM went from 30% IV to 46.2% IV). Long calls should benefit from both Samsung + Sk Hynix carrying the index. And the main benefit is vega expansion that you won't get from $KORU. You also can't get this option MM pinning like individual US stocks since this is Korea's national index and long term. TLDR: Individual components SK Hynix + Samsung are highly volatile. They're basically half of the index, but options in index are priced with low volatility, perhaps due to historical 5-10 year data. Long calls benefit from vega expansion that weren't priced in correctly as MM forward vol estimates are anchored too heavily on historical realized vol, which was low for $EWY over the past 5-10 years
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