Posts Tagged ‘Stock Options’

Stock Options: Know When To Hold ‘Em

If the stock options you’ve received from your employer are burning a hole in your pocket, it may be time to get a second (or third) opinion before you cash in. Employees often believe they have the inside scoop on when the stock’s market price will top out, and that false sense of confidence can [...]

Why Trading Stock Options is Better in a Recession

The 2008 recession and stock market crash is the worst financial and economic crisis since the great depression. By Feb 2009, the Dow has dropped almost 50%, erasing all its gains since 1998. In terms of absolute points, the Dow has dropped over 7000 points, which is more than the entire Dow index before 1998. [...]

Options Trading and Risk

Is options trading risky? This is one of the most popular questions that options trading beginners ask. In fact, my clients ask me this same question all the time. I would then ask them “What do you mean by risky?”. The usual answer would be “Can I lose a lot of money in options trading?”.
At [...]

Why Most People Fail at Options Trading

Have you or your friends ever attended an options seminar, learned how “simple” it is to make a high income from options trading but yet when you did it for real, you failed to make any money consistently?
Indeed, from my observation in this industry over the past decade, I have noticed that the chances of [...]

Options Extrinsic Value as a Stock Indicator

I bought DNDN shares last month at about $4.00 and less than a month later, I sold it for $21. Yes, that’s 425% profit in less than a month. Was that pure luck? How often has that happened to you? What if I told you that luck has nothing to do with this and that [...]

Stock Option Trading – New Options Clearing Corporation Rule

A few years ago on a Monday morning, I checked my brokerage account and to my surprise it showed that I had purchased 1,000 shares of AMD for a total cost of $15,000. The payment for this purchase was taken out of my brokerage money market account.
Why surprised you may ask. I had not put [...]

Long and Short Butterfly Trading

The Butterfly is an option position that is composed of 2 vertical spreads that have a common strike price. In other words, butterfly trading involves an opening position where options (either calls or puts) are bought (or sold) at 3 different strike prices. The way in which these options are created makes the butterfly a [...]

What Is Options Trading?

An option contract is an agreement between two parties to buy/sell an asset (In this case, the asset refers to stock) at a certain price and specific date.
It is called an option because the buyer is not obliged to carry out the transaction. If, over the life of the contract, the asset value decreases, the [...]

Stock Options – What you Need to Know

Call and What?
An option is a “legal financial contract”. The holder has the right, but is under no obligation, to accrue or sell a predetermined number of stock shares. This is to be done at a price that has been predetermined which is called a strike price. It is also to be [...]

Selling Options – is it the Holy Grail of Investments?

Option sellers believe that if it’s not, it’s probably the closest an investor will ever get to the long sought Holy Grail of Investments or what is considered to be the ideal investment.
Let’s take a look and see what exactly is regarded as the ideal investment.
When asked to define what the ideal investment [...]