Frequently Asked Questions

Sensa Investments is not an investment advisor or Broker/Dealer. We are an educational site and we do not engage in transactions or provide any investment advice or strategy. No information on the site constitutes the sale, purchase or recommendation of any security.

We would like to stress the second part of our name ‘Investments’. We consider ourselves investors first and traders second. All our products are based on a long-term investment horizon and we do not engage in or recommend short term highly volatile trading strategies offering outsized (and unrealistic) short term gains.

You can either use our contact form available at sensainvestments.com/contact or email us directly at [email protected]. We aim to respond to all inquiries within maximum one business day and usually much quicker than that.

In addition to email (and SMS) instructions, we also offer an application programming interface (API) where you can request information directly utilizing your favourite programming language (we use Python for our own scripts) and implement in your own trading scripts/strategies.

You can also always log in to your account on our website and click the link in your dashboard to your subscription where the current investment recommendation will be shown.

If you don’t have a lot of prior knowledge trading options, we strongly recommend that you paper trade them for a couple of months until you feel comfortable enough undertaking the trades in your own account.

The main (but not only) difference is the implied leverage (the number of options written for specific level of collateral) which result in smaller drawdowns and less volatility for the more conservative products but conversely also in lower historic and expected returns.

We calculate historic trading performance using real observed market prices supplied by CBOE. To be conservative we assume trades taking place 25% inside the bid/ask spread (in other words we do not use mid-market prices but also do not assume passive price taking). In addition to spread costs the strategies include all relevant commissions (we use trading costs from Interactive Brokers).

Portfolio collateral is assumed invested in 1 month T-Bills to represent the risk free rate for the duration of the underlying options.

Historic trading performance is calculated using one set of observations per day (we use 15.45 prices given better liquidity vs. closing). (Our algorithms run in real time during market open hours).

The minimum collateral required depends on product you decide to subscribe to but start at around US$150,000 if you decide to utilize traditional SPX options. However, you can also choose to utilize S&P mini-options (XSP) which trade at a 10 times smaller multiplier compared to SPX options and thus the minimum collateral required to follow the product is consequently also 10 times lower or around US$15,000.

You may also consider combining traditional SPX and XSP options to fully utlilize you available collateral. Assuming one SPX option for a specific Sensa Investments product requires $150,000 of collateral and the equivalent XSP option requires $15,000. If you wanted to commit $240,000 to the product you could sell one SPX option and six XSP options to fully utilize your collateral.

The trade alerts will be based on regular SPX options. So, to implement the strategy, exactly as presented in the trade alerts, the minimum recommended collateral requirement is around $150,000. Again, as the underlier between traditional SPX options and XSP mini-options is exactly the same (S&P 500 index) the strategy can be implemented in smaller accounts as well as described above.

Our products are long term investment strategies and we attempt to maximize returns while keeping trading frequency relatively limited. Historically our trading algorithms have resulted in trade instructions on average once every three weeks.

In other words, you should be able to follow the strategy with a relatively limited time commitment.

In order to follow the strategy as closely as possible and avoid large drawdowns (especially in periods of high volatility) it is recommended that you execute trades as close to the time when a trade alert is issued.

However, as this is a long-term investment product with relatively limited trading frequency the performance impact of not executing trades exactly when issued should not be very significant.

If you use our API in your own automated trading scripts this issue can of course be largely avoided.

While our algorithms run in real time during market hours the historic back-tested investment performance is based on one daily observation of market prices.

The algorithm assumes that trades are executed at the exact same time of a trade alert being issued. In reality prices move around constantly and there may be a small delay between when the trade alert is issued and you undertake a trade.

This can of course lead to slight underperformance or outperformance vs. the strategy.

SPX options benefit from very low trading costs at most brokers. Typically trading one SPX contract with a 100 times multiplier incur commission costs in the region of US$1 (this is of course incurred both on entry and exit).

You will also need to take into account our subscription costs in your overall costs. As we charge fixed fees the impact on your performance will of course depend on the size of your portfolio.

You are of course free to invest your collateral as you please and it also depends on what proportion of your overall wealth you are allocating to our products. In all circumstances we recommend that you invest it very conservatively.

All our products assume that the collateral is invested in 1 month T-Bills but depending on your risk appetite and return aspirations you may consider investing slightly less conservatively.

Even our most aggressive strategies assume a level of collateral far above the minimum exchange requirements (typically 3 times more). As such the risk of margin calls is very limited.

Based on the minimum exchange requirements none of our strategies have been close to receiving a margin call since the start of our back-testing going back to 2004.

However, please be aware that each broker can have their own more stringent margin requirements. As such, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the margin requirements in place for index options at your broker.

For more insights on option margin requirements please refer to our blog article ‘Understanding Option Margin Requirements’.

While in the majority of cases, a trade signal is triggered before option expiry, it is possible that no signal is generated. 

In the event that no trade signal is triggered, our standard procedure is to allow the option to expire without taking any action as executing trades at market close may not be feasible for clients who trade manually.

If you hold a short put option, the outcome will depend on its status at expiration. If the option is out of the money, it will expire worthless. However, if it is in the money, your broker will typically handle the cash settlement on your behalf.

Following this, on the subsequent trading day, usually the next morning, we will promptly provide a new trade signal to reestablish your position.

In order to change your email and/or password, please go to sensainvestments.com/update-profile (you will have to login, if not logged in already) and make any desired changes.

It is very easy activating SMS alerts for products that you are subscribed to. Simply go to sensainvestments.com/update-profile (you will have to login, if not logged in already) and add your phone number. Please make sure to include the correct country code (e.g. 1 for the US or 44 for the UK) in addition to your phone number. Once you have added your phone number you will automatically start receiving SMS alerts (in addition to email alerts) when a trade alert is triggered for a product that you are currently subscribing to.

If you are paying for your subscription by credit or debit card you can update your payment card details on sensainvestments.com/update-payment-card (you will have to login, if not logged in already).

If you are paying by PayPal you will need to update your billing details from inside your PayPal account.

You can change and or upgrade your subscription from one product to another product and or payment period at anytime. In order to do so, please go to sensainvestments.com/subscription-details (you will have to login, if not logged in already). You will then be taken to a page with an overview of your subscription(s) and you can click the ‘Upgrade or change your membership’ link next to the subscription(s) you would like to change/upgrade.

Should you upgrade or change your subscription in the middle of an existing payment period your new subscription payment will be reduced by a prorated amount for the remaining period of your existing membership.

Please note however, that we are unable to refund already paid amounts so if the proration credit is larger than the payment for the new subscription your first payment for the new subscription will be free and you will lose any unused payment exceeding the price of the new subscription (this is only relevant if you decide to change from a yearly payment to a monthly payment and less than c. 11 months have passed from your initial payment of the yearly membership).

In order to cancel a subscription, please go to sensainvestments.com/subscription-details (you will have to login, if not logged in already). You will then be taken to a page with an overview of your subscription(s) and you can click the ‘Cancel your membership’ link next to the subscription(s) you would like to cancel.

If you signed up for our free trial with the option to provide payments details later (and you are yet to provide these) the option to cancel will not be present. However, if you don’t provice payments details before the end of your trial your subscriptoin will expire automatically at the end of the trial so there is no need to cancel it.

Please note that your subscription will remain active and you will continue to receive trade instructions until expiration of the period you have already paid for (or until the end of your trial period).We are always looking to improve our services. If you decide to cancel your subscription, we would very much appreciate if you could spare a minute or two letting us know what we could do better.

We do not offer refunds. However, all our products come with a 30-day free trial period (eligible for your first subscription) and you can cancel anytime within this 30-day period without being charged.