Construction of a vertical spread occurs with the purchase and sale of a call (put) in the same stock and in the same month. The only difference between the two options is the strike price. For example, an investor would construct a vertical spread by purchasing the IBM June 55-call while selling the June IBM [...]
Construction of a vertical spread occurs with the purchase and sale of a call (put) in the same stock and in the same month. The only difference between the two options is the strike price. For example, an investor would construct a vertical spread by purchasing the IBM June 55-call while selling the June IBM [...]
Conventional wisdom tells us to invest our hard earned money in traditional vehicles we are most familiar with such as stocks, mutual funds, and bonds. Since understanding the up and down nature of the stock market, its generally more comfortable for many casual investors. The fact is, options trading provides several advantages that many regular [...]
Stock trading is (at least for those insiders) a thing of the past. The fact of the matter is most successful individual traders in today's market understand and trade options in some form or another. The beauty of stock options is they can do anything a stock can do much at a much cheaper cost [...]
Since the Straddle’s profit potential depends on its price from purchase time to expiration, the investor should be aware of the factors that affect the Straddle;s price. Several factors affect a Straddle’s price. The first is, of course, stock price. The stock’s price dictates the value of both components of the Straddle – the call [...]
Finding the best signals services is a lot like finding a needle in haystack because many signals services, whether it’s a stock, forex, futures or options service, are just trying to sell product. They lure investors in with outlandish promises of trading riches only to disappoint in the end. There are a variety of [...]
Time decay, also known as theta, is defined as the rate by which an options value erodes into expiration. The value of the option over parity to the stock is called extrinsic value.
Since an option is a depreciating asset, meaning it has a limited life, the extrinsic value in the option will wither away daily [...]
Another protective strategy that allows for some upside capital gain while providing maximum down side protection is the collar.
The collar is a combination of the covered call and protective put strategies. The collar uses a long put position in coordination with a short call position along with a long stock position. The ratio is one [...]
The seller of a time spread buys the nearer month option and sells the outer-month option in a one-to-one ratio. To profit from the sale of the time spread, the seller must look for two things.
The first is a decrease in implied volatility. As volatility decreases, the out-month option (which the seller is short) loses [...]
Clinging on to Fundamental Analysis and stock picking software, only keeps you stuck in trading equities. Trading this way, compounds concentration risk in one asset class and fails to adequately diversify risks across Equities, Bonds, Currencies and Commodities. Thereâs much more to stock option trading, than stock itself.I cite Benjamin F. Kingâs study, quoted repeatedly [...]