It was a great week for volatility sellers in the option market for the expiration 23-Dec-2016. Ahead of the Christmas holiday, which saw the market closed on Monday, there was little incentive to take large positions. The last several weeks have seen a Trump rally, but news flow was light in the pre-holiday week and traders saw no reason to either substantially extend the gains or attempt any sizable profit taking. The major averages edged up slightly for the week as a whole. The S&P 500 advanced by +0.3%, while the Dow and the Nasdaq both climbed by +0.5%. While there were very modest gains for the overall stock market, in the options market, puts slightly outperformed calls, though only in the sense that they lost less often.It was a tough market for volatility buyers to pick winners across the board. Unhedged ATM Straddles returned winners just 22% of the time during the week. However, this still outperformed either calls or puts. Unhedged 25-Delta Puts were winners only 13.3% of the time, while unhedged 25-Delta Calls turned in gains a paltry 6.4% of the time.StandoutsTwitter ($TWTR) lost significant ground during the week following the announcement that its Chief Technology Officer was leaving the company. Adam Messinger, Twitter's CTO, announced in a tweet late Tuesday that he is leaving the company. "After 5 years I've decided to leave Twitter and take some time off," Messinger said. This prompted a notable sell off on Wednesday that continued into Thursday. Unhedged ATM Straddles for TWTR had an average return of +199.3% for the week. Unhedged 25-Delta Puts returned an average of +903.3%.Nvidia ($NVDA) climbed steadily through the week, adding to recent strength. The stock gained $2.67 to $109.78 on Friday, marking its ninth straight day of gains and extending its 52-week high. After reaching a 52-week low of $24.75 in February, shares of the graphics chip maker climbed steadily through 2016. RBC Capital Markets recently named the stock one its top picks for 2017, along with Apple ($AAPL) and Broadcom ($AVGO). Unhedged ATM Straddles for NVDA returned an average of +144.8% during the week. Unhedged 25-Delta Calls returned an average of +639.5%.Hedging ComparisonIn general, there wasn't much benefit to hedging during the week. It saved some losses on the call side, but for puts, it only made matters worse. It was a very slight benefit for ATM Straddles.Unhedged ATM Straddles had an average loss of -35.7%, compared to -35.3% for once-hedged positions and -31.7% for daily hedging. For 25-Delta Calls, unhedged positions had an average loss of -78.7%. This improved with once-hedged positions, but that strategy still had a negative return of an average -60.9%. Daily hedging took this to -56.4%.Unhedged 25-Delta Puts had an average loss of -51.3% for unhedged positions. This got worse with hedging, turning into -67.9% for once-hedged positions. Daily hedging wasn't quite that bad, though it remained a larger loser, on average, than unhedged positions. Daily-hedged 25-Delta Puts had an average loss of -55.5%.