How do Stock Options Work? Trade Calls and Puts – Part 1.
by Darwin on August 10, 2009.
Since I routinely post about stock options trading, investing, hedging and income generation and get the occasional question, “ How do Stock Options Work? ” or “ How to Trade Stock Options “, I figured I’d do a series on the various types of stock options strategies out there (they are numerous!) by starting with the most basic stock option strategies: Trading put and call options. I’ll start with some definitions and then get into some real-life examples.
Stock Option Trading Basics:
A Stock Options Contract is a contract between a buyer and a seller whereby a CALL buyer can buy a stock at a given price called the strike price and a PUT buyer can sell a stock at the strike price . 1 Stock Option contract represents 100 shares of the underlying stock Think of a CALL and a PUT as opposites. You can be a CALL Buyer OR Seller You can be a PUT Buyer OR Seller Given Puts/Calls and Buyer/Seller status, there are 4 main types of transactions we’ll cover today – Put Buyer, Put Seller, Call Buyer and Call Seller If you are an option buyer, you pay the listed “premium” for the option; conversely, as a seller of an option contract, you derive income equivalent to the “premium”
Key Options Terms are the following:
Strike Price: This is the key price that drives the transaction. For a Call option, if the underlying share price is BELOW the strike price, the option is “out of the money” and if so at expiry, it will expire worthless. For a Put option, if the underlying share price is ABOVE the strike price, the option is “out of the money” and if so at expiry, it will expire worthless. Expiration: This is the last date the option can be traded or exercised, after which it expires. Generally, there are options traded for each month and if they go out years, they are referred to as LEAPS. The same concepts hold for LEAPS as the stock options contracts we’re discussing here. Premium: This is just another word for the price of the option contract. Underlying Security: For our purposes, we will be discussing stock options. If you’re holding a contract on Microsoft, you have the right (but not the obligation) to exercise 100 shares of MSFT. Buyer or Seller Status: If you are the buyer, you have control of the transaction. You purchased the option contract and can execute the transaction or close it out or you can choose to allow the options contract to expire (usually only in the case where it is worthless). If you are a seller of an options contract, you are at the mercy of the buyer and must rely on the holder at the other end of the contract. There is the opportunity to “close out” the position.
Stock Options Trading Example #1 – Call Buyer:
People trade stock options for myriad reasons. Often times, it is purely for speculative reasons. For example, if you believe that the Swine Flu pandemic is going to become particularly troublesome and a stock with a vested interest in supplying vaccines in large quantities would stand to benefit from such a scenario, then perhaps you purchase an out of the money call option on Novavax. If shares are at $4.28 today and you think they could rocket past $10 on a massive epidemic, then perhaps you buy the January (expiry) 10 (strike) Call option. The cost (premium) is .70. The .70 is “per share” so .70*100=$70. This means it’s going to cost $70 to buy a single option contract, plus whatever trading commissions exist. Since you paid .7 or $70 and the strike price is $10 per share, by January expiry (the third Friday of every month), NVAX shares would need to be at $10.70 in order for you to break even. In order to have made money (in lieu of commissions), shares would need to exceed $10.70. If, for example, shares rocket to $20.00 at expiry and you sell the options back to close it out just prior to expiry, you’d pocket the difference between $20 and $10 and reap (10*100shares) = $1000. Given your initial $70 investment, even though shares only went up about 5-fold from $4.28 to $20, the option returned over 14-times the initial investment ($1000/$70). As you can see, utilizing these leveraged instruments can lead to big gains quickly. However, most options actually expire worthless – about 2/3 by most conventional estimates. There’s no free ride. For everyone looking for a speculative home run, there’s a seller on the other side deriving income from a speculative buyer thinking that the stock WILL NOT reach the strike price they sold at, so they’ll get to keep that .7 at the end of the expiry in January. Note that at the other end is a Call Seller which is often someone engaging in covered call option writing strategies – this can be a lucrative option strategy worth checking out as well.
Stock Option Trading Example #2 – Put Buyer:
When wondering if anyone actually made money during the economic collapse, the answer is a resounding YES! People who were holding puts on Financial and Real Estate stocks especially, made large returns on investment given the precipitous declines in shares of those companies. If for example, you feel we’re in for another economic calamity due to commercial mortgages collapsing next, and all Financials are going to fall, you could buy a Put option on the Financials ETF XLF, which is representative of the Financial sector at large. With a share price of $13.34, let’s say you buy a Dec09 expiry Put with a strike price of $10. That means that you expect the XLF ETF to drop well below $10 per share by December. The premium (or your cash outlay) for such a play is .25, or $25 per contract. That’s relatively cheap. But keep in mind that you’re talking about a 40% drop to just break even. If the XLF collapses and returns to its March lows of around $6 per share, your put would be worth about $4 at expriy (10-6). That represents a 16x return on investment. Imagine the players that had the foresight to buy out of the money puts in 2007 and 2008?
How to Trade Stock Options?
There are various online brokerage outfits that allow you to trade stock options. For most outfits, you can buy options without any special requirements. If you’re looking to sell options, because your risk is much greater (or unlimited for selling naked/uncovered calls), you generally need to sign up for a margin account and agree to risk notifications.
Here are the top online options trading brokerages based on reviews and costing:
1. optionsXpress – Awesome $100 Signup Bonus Running Now. Plus, $12.95 for 1,5, or 10 contracts – flat fee if hitting 35 traders/quarter. Otherwise $14.95/trade. A good price for newer/smaller options traders. Stocks are $9.95 per trade if greater than 8 trades per quarter or $14.95 for 8 or less trades.
2. Zecco – Another incredible pricing scenario –
Get 10 free stock trades every month with $25,000 balance or 25 trades each month $4.50 otherwise.
3. tradeMONSTER – $7.50 Stock Trades across the board. $12.50 Options Trades for up to 20 contracts.
4. OptionsHouse – An incredible $2.95 Stock Trading Price and $9.95 Options Contract Pricing.
5. Tradeking is widely knows as best in class for service and cost. I endorse TradeKing and I have an account myself. $4.95 stock trades and competitive on everything from Options to Margin. Check it out!
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I love TradeKing. I thought that I would never leave Etrade, but I was wrong. There is so much you can do and make with stock options. If you don’t use stock options currently then learn how to because you will make a killing with your little money that you have.
Richard Gulino Reply:
October 5th, 2011 at 2:52 pm.
Earn Cash Now, I am interested in learning about options and would be grateful for your teaching me..
Hi, I’m looking to invest in mobile app stocks and smartphone stocks. Can you provide any suggestions? So far I have SWKS, ARMH, MIMV, ZAGG, RFMD and NVDA from this list: wikinvest/wiki/Mobile_app_stocks but I need need additional positions. If there are any ETF’s with a focus on mobile that would be great too. Thanks – Phil Cantor.
Very useful. I think that options trading has great potential for the non-professional investor as well as the professionals. I think it is necessary to learn about some of the strategies beyond straight forward buying calls and puts. Is it realistic for the home trader to engage in selling options, or should he stick to buying only?
Than you so much for all of this great information. Your explanations on the ‘call buyer’ and ‘put’ buyer really helps. Another site that I have found to be very helpful for beginners is (optionsimple). Thanks again. You have helped me very much 🙂
Where can I find out the prices for put options? I would like to find out how much a put option cost if I had a strike price of the same amount that I bought a stock for and only need it for a short time say 5 days. I want to use it as insurance or protection that my stock doesn’t go below what I bought it for.
Binary Options are a Scam to take your money. They are offshore and unregulated by the US. Don’t be fooled if you go to youtube also search for binary options scam. You can give them your money they will take it you can make $50,000 but they will never send you a dime. Also if you give them your personal info. Instant Identity Theft.
Good explanation. I always find options to be more complex than stocks but this is a good start.
Options Basics: How Options Work.
Options contracts are essentially the price probabilities of future events. The more likely something is to occur, the more expensive an option would be that profits from that event. This is the key to understanding the relative value of options.
Let’s take as a generic example a call option on International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) with a strike price of $200; IBM is currently trading at $175 and expires in 3 months. Remember, the call option gives you the right , but not the obligation , to purchase shares of IBM at $200 at any point in the next 3 months. If the price of IBM rises above $200, then you “win.” It doesn’t matter that we don’t know the price of this option for the moment – what we can say for sure, though, is that the same option that expires not in 3 months but in 1 month will cost less because the chances of anything occurring within a shorter interval is smaller. Likewise, the same option that expires in a year will cost more. This is also why options experience time decay: the same option will be worth less tomorrow than today if the price of the stock doesn’t move.
Returning to our 3-month expiration, another factor that will increase the likelihood that you’ll “win” is if the price of IBM stock rises closer to $200 – the closer the price of the stock to the strike, the more likely the event will happen. Thus, as the price of the underlying asset rises, the price of the call option premium will also rise. Alternatively, as the price goes down – and the gap between the strike price and the underlying asset prices widens – the option will cost less. Along a similar line, if the price of IBM stock stays at $175, the call with a $190 strike price will be worth more than the $200 strike call – since, again, the chances of the $190 event happening is greater than $200.
There is one other factor that can increase the odds that the event we want to happen will occur – if the volatility of the underlying asset increases. Something that has greater price swings – both up and down – will increase the chances of an event happening. Therefore, the greater the volatility, the greater the price of the option. Options trading and volatility are intrinsically linked to each other in this way.
With this in mind, let’s consider a hypothetical example. Let's say that on May 1, the stock price of Cory's Tequila Co. (CTQ) is $67 and the premium (cost) is $3.15 for a July 70 Call, which indicates that the expiration is the third Friday of July and the strike price is $70. The total price of the contract is $3.15 x 100 = $315. In reality, you'd also have to take commissions into account, but we'll ignore them for this example. On most U. S. exchanges, a stock option contract is the option to buy or sell 100 shares; that's why you must multiply the contract by 100 to get the total price. The strike price of $70 means that the stock price must rise above $70 before the call option is worth anything; furthermore, because the contract is $3.15 per share, the break-even price would be $73.15.
Three weeks later the stock price is $78. The options contract has increased along with the stock price and is now worth $8.25 x 100 = $825. Subtract what you paid for the contract, and your profit is ($8.25 - $3.15) x 100 = $510. You almost doubled our money in just three weeks! You could sell your options, which is called "closing your position," and take your profits – unless, of course, you think the stock price will continue to rise. For the sake of this example, let's say we let it ride.
By the expiration date, the price of CTQ drops down to $62. Because this is less than our $70 strike price and there is no time left, the option contract is worthless. We are now down by the original premium cost of $315.
To recap, here is what happened to our option investment:
So far we've talked about options as the right to buy or sell (exercise) the underlying good. This is true, but in reality, a majority of options are not actually exercised. In our example, you could make money by exercising at $70 and then selling the stock back in the market at $78 for a profit of $8 a share. You could also keep the stock, knowing you were able to buy it at a discount to the present value. However, the majority of the time holders choose to take their profits by trading out (closing out) their position. This means that holders sell their options in the market, and writers buy their positions back to close. According to the CBOE, only about 10% of options are exercised, 60% are traded (closed) out, and 30% expire worthless.
At this point it is worth explaining more about the pricing of options. In our example the premium (price) of the option went from $3.15 to $8.25. These fluctuations can be explained by intrinsic value and extrinsic value, also known as time value. An option's premium is the combination of its intrinsic value and its time value. Intrinsic value is the amount in-the-money, which, for a call option, means that the price of the stock equals the strike price. Time value represents the possibility of the option increasing in value. Refer back to the beginning of this section of the turorial: the more likely an event is to occur, the more expensive the option. This is the extrinsic, or time value. So, the price of the option in our example can be thought of as the following:
In real life options almost always trade at some level above their intrinsic value, because the probability of an event occurring is never absolutely zero, even if it is highly unlikely. If you are wondering, we just picked the numbers for this example out of the air to demonstrate how options work.
A brief word on options pricing. As we’ve seen, the relative price of an option has to do with the chances that an event will happen. But in order to put an absolute price on an option, a pricing model must be used. The most well-known model is the Black-Scholes-Merton model, which was derived in the 1970’s, and for which the Nobel prize in economics was awarded. Since then other models have emerged such as binomial and trinomial tree models, which are also commonly used.
The NASDAQ Options Trading Guide.
Equity options today are hailed as one of the most successful financial products to be introduced in modern times. Options have proven to be superior and prudent investment tools offering you, the investor, flexibility, diversification and control in protecting your portfolio or in generating additional investment income. We hope you'll find this to be a helpful guide for learning how to trade options.
Understanding Options.
Options are financial instruments that can be used effectively under almost every market condition and for almost every investment goal. Among a few of the many ways, options can help you:
Protect your investments against a decline in market prices Increase your income on current or new investments Buy an equity at a lower price Benefit from an equity price’s rise or fall without owning the equity or selling it outright.
Benefits of Trading Options:
Orderly, Efficient and Liquid Markets.
Standardized option contracts allow for orderly, efficient and liquid option markets.
Flexibility.
Options are an extremely versatile investment tool. Because of their unique risk/reward structure, options can be used in many combinations with other option contracts and/or other financial instruments to seek profits or protection.
An equity option allows investors to fix the price for a specific period of time at which an investor can purchase or sell 100 shares of an equity for a premium (price), which is only a percentage of what one would pay to own the equity outright. This allows option investors to leverage their investment power while increasing their potential reward from an equity’s price movements.
Limited Risk for Buyer.
Unlike other investments where the risks may have no boundaries, options trading offers a defined risk to buyers. An option buyer absolutely cannot lose more than the price of the option, the premium. Because the right to buy or sell the underlying security at a specific price expires on a given date, the option will expire worthless if the conditions for profitable exercise or sale of the option contract are not met by the expiration date. An uncovered option seller (sometimes referred to as the uncovered writer of an option), on the other hand, may face unlimited risk.
This options trading guide provides an overview of characteristics of equity options and how these investments work in the following segments:
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Options Basics Tutorial.
Nowadays, many investors' portfolios include investments such as mutual funds, stocks and bonds. But the variety of securities you have at your disposal does not end there. Another type of security, known as options, presents a world of opportunity to sophisticated investors who understand both the practical uses and inherent risks associated with this asset class.
The power of options lies in their versatility, and their ability to interact with traditional assets such as individual stocks. They enable you to adapt or adjust your position according to many market situations that may arise. For example, options can be used as an effective hedge against a declining stock market to limit downside losses. Options can be put to use for speculative purposes or to be exceedingly conservative, as you want. Using options is therefore best described as part of a larger strategy of investing.
This functional versatility, however, does not come without its costs. Options are complex securities and can be extremely risky if used improperly. This is why, when trading options with a broker, you'll often come across a disclaimer like the following:
Options involve risks and are not suitable for everyone. Option trading can be speculative in nature and carry substantial risk of loss. Only invest with risk capital.
Options belong to the larger group of securities known as derivatives. This word has come to be associated with excessive risk taking and having the ability crash economies. That perception, however, is broadly overblown. All “derivative” means is that its price is dependent on, or derived from the price of something else. Put this way, wine is a derivative of grapes; ketchup is a derivative of tomatoes. Options are derivatives of financial securities – their value depends on the price of some other asset. That is all derivative means, and there are many different types of securities that fall under the name derivatives, including futures, forwards, swaps (of which there are many types), and mortgage backed securities. In the 2008 crisis, it was mortgage backed securities and a particular type of swap that caused trouble. Options were largely blameless. (See also: 10 Options Strategies To Know .)
Properly knowing how options work, and how to use them appropriately can give you a real advantage in the market. If the speculative nature of options doesn't fit your style, no problem – you can use options without speculating. Even if you decide never to use options, however, it is important to understand how companies that you are investing in use them. Whether it is to hedge the risk of foreign-exchange transactions or to give employees ownership in the form of stock options, most multi-nationals today use options in some form or another.
This tutorial will introduce you to the fundamentals of options. Keep in mind that most options traders have many years of experience, so don't expect to be an expert immediately after reading this tutorial. If you aren't familiar with how the stock market works, you might want to check out the Stock Basics tutorial first.
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