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How Aggressive Investors - Top Stock Trading Tips · Bears believe that a stock will fall and they can buy put options which give them the right to sell 100 shares of the underlying

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Page 1: How Aggressive Investors - Top Stock Trading Tips · Bears believe that a stock will fall and they can buy put options which give them the right to sell 100 shares of the underlying
Page 2: How Aggressive Investors - Top Stock Trading Tips · Bears believe that a stock will fall and they can buy put options which give them the right to sell 100 shares of the underlying

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© Wealthpire, Inc. www.Wealthpire.com Page 1

How Aggressive Investors

Can Supercharge Profits With Options

Options exist to help you maximize your gains when you are right. They are a powerful trading

tool to help you win big, but you must also manage risk. The downside when you buy an options

contract is strictly limited to the amount you invest. The upside is virtually unlimited. It can cost

much less to trade options than it costs to trade individual stocks and you can get started

immediately, even if you have limited trading capital.

Many beginning traders think that options are risky complex. They seem to require an advanced

degree in mathematics and use a completely new language. In this special report we break

options down to the basics. You’ll learn that options are easy to understand and relatively simple

to trade and while they aren’t right for everyone, they are appropriate for aggressive traders.

The Basics: Calls and Puts

As the name implies, trading options gives the trader a choice. Options give the buyer a right, but

not an obligation, to buy or sell a specific stock at a specific price within a specific timeframe.

Standardized options contracts have been around since 1973 and are increasingly popular with

individual traders. You will be provided a copy of the standard contract terms when you open an

options account but the contract simply says you have the right to buy or sell 100 shares of the

underlying stock at the strike price prior to the expiration. More than 3 billion contracts are

traded annually in the United States and several billion more in markets around the world. The

popularity of options lies in the fact that they give traders flexibility, reduce and limit risk, and

offer high potential returns.

Before getting into detail on options, let’s define the key terms.

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! A call is an options contract that gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy

100 shares of the underlying stock at a specified price (called the strike price of the call)

at any time within the life of the contract. All options contract will include an expiration

date which is when the right expires.

! A put is an options contract that gives the buyer the right to sell the underlying stock at a

specified price for a specified time.

! Premium is the amount you pay for an option. If the price of an option is $1, then the

premium is $1.

! Bulls believe that a stock will go up. You could buy calls since the price of the call

contract should increase as the price of the underlying stock increases. With a call, you

have unlimited profit potential since the underlying stock could reach any price. Your

potential loss is limited to the amount you paid for the call.

! Bears believe that a stock will fall and they can buy put options which give them the

right to sell 100 shares of the underlying stock at a certain price for a certain time. If the

stock price declines, the put would become more valuable.

Some simple ideas could help you remember these terms. Bulls attack by pushing their horns

upward. Bears attack by striking downward with their claws. A stock price is attacked by bulls

and bears every day and the up moves in price are considered bullish while down moves in price

are bearish. If you own a call option and the stock goes up, you will call for the stock to be

delivered to you at a profit. When you own a put contract, you put the shares out of your account

if you can exercise the contract at a profit.

You do not have to exercise your right to buy or sell the stock under an options contract. You can

do so, but you can also close an options trade by simply selling the option you bought. This can

be done at a profit or a loss depending upon how the market moves. You can also allow an

option to expire on the date specified in the contract and that will close the trade. Although

profitable options will be exercised and you will then own the underlying stock, your online

broker will notify you several days before that happens and explain that you can close the trade

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by selling an option and taking the profit or they will exercise the option, deliver the shares to

you and you will pay them for the purchase. It is extremely unlikely that you will own a stock by

accident since you will most likely receive several notices that your broker is looking at

exercising the position.

Options generally sell at a low price and give traders the opportunity to maximize their gains

with a limited amount of trading capital. As an example, consider Intel (INTC), a stock that

often makes a big move after announcing earnings. If INTC is trading at $25 a share, you can

buy 100 shares for $2,500 (plus commissions and since commissions are usually very small we

will ignore commissions in all examples). If you are right and INTC gains 10% after the earnings

announcement, you could sell your position for $2,750 (100 shares times the new price of $27.50

a share) for a profit of $250.

Instead of buying the shares, you could have purchased a call option. A call option on INTC with

a strike price of $25 and less than a week until expiration might be selling for $0.50. The contract

is for 100 shares so your total cost would be $50. If INTC moves to $27.50, your call would be

worth $2.50 and you could sell it for a $2.00 profit. Instead of making a 10% profit as you would

on the stock, you could earn a profit of 400%. The price of the call would be $2.50 because you

could exercise your right to buy INTC at $25 and immediately sell it at the market price of

$27.50. Values of options contracts are based on how much you could make by exercising the

right although you will always be able to close your position without exercising it.

Options with more time to expiration cost more since the seller of the option is taking more risk

by giving you more time to exercise your right to buy. In the case of INTC, an option with 30

days to expiration could be selling for $1 a share. If the stock moves 10%, your option would

still be worth $2.50 and you would be able to sell your call for a $250 (150%) profit. The extra

cost you pay for more time would be lost if the stock rises quickly. However, you would still

make a larger percentage gain than you would by owning the stock.

If the price of INTC fell in these examples, your option would expire worthless. Consider the

case of the stock falling by 10%. If you own 100 shares of the stock, you would lose $250. If you

bought the option with less than a week to expiration your loss would be $50 and you would lose

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$100 with the longer-term option. Although your loss with the options would be 100% of the

amount you invested, it will cost you less money and that helps you to preserve trading capital on

losing trades.

To summarize the possible outcomes, an options trade will generally deliver larger percentage

gains on winning trades and smaller dollar losses on losing trades. When buying options, you can

never lose more than you paid for the option but your upside is unlimited.

Valuing an Option

It is important to understand how an options contract is valued. There are three key concepts that

contribute to understanding options prices. You will need to know the strike price and the

expiration month of the options contract, and you will need to understand the volatility of the

underlying stock. The price at which the options buyer has the right to buy or sell is called the

strike price or exercise price. The expiration date is usually the third Friday of the month that the

contract expires in. The volatility defines how much the underlying stock typically moves in a

trading day.

Strike Price

The strike price is the value that the option would be exercised at. A call option on IBM with a

strike price of $200 would give the call buyer the right to buy 100 shares of IBM at $200 per

share. If IBM is trading at $210, the call contract would allow the trader to immediately buy IBM

at $200 and sell it at $210, realizing a profit of $10 a share or $1,000 on the contract for 100

shares.

One of the most important factors in determining the value of an option is the intrinsic value,

which is the difference between the market price of the underlying stock and the strike price. The

intrinsic value is how much an option is worth if it is exercised and converted to shares in the

underlying stock today. For example, if IBM is trading at $210, a call option on IBM with a

strike price of $200 has an intrinsic value of $10 ($210 market price - $200 strike price).

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While a call option has an intrinsic value if the strike price is below the market price, a put

option would have intrinsic value if the strike price is above the current price of the underlying

stock. If IBM is trading at $190, a call with a strike price of $200 has no intrinsic value but a put

option at that strike price has an intrinsic value of $10.

Traders describe the intrinsic value by saying an option is “in-the-money, at-the-money, or out-

of-the-money.” An option with a strike price that can immediately be exercised profitably has a

positive intrinsic value and is said to be in-the-money. An option with a strike price that is the

same or close to the strike price has no intrinsic value and is at-the-money. An option with a

strike price that cannot be executed profitably is considered to be out-of-the-money. Both at-the-

money and out-of-the-money options are worthless at expiration.

! In-The-Money! At-The-Money! Out-Of-The-Money!

Call! Market Price > Strike Price! Market Price = Strike Price! Market Price < Strike Price!

Put! Market Price < Strike Price! Market Price = Strike Price! Market Price > Strike Price!

It is very important to remember that options are depreciating assets and their value decays over

time until they ultimately expire. An option with a nine month expiration date will be worth

more than one with six weeks until expiration. This idea leads to the second important factor in

options pricing, the time value.

Time Value

Over time, both puts and calls decline in value and ultimately waste away to nothing unless they

are in-the-money at expiration. To an option buyer, the greater the time between purchase and

expiration, the more time they have available for the value of the underlying stock to change.

Because of this, options with longer expiration periods will tend to cost more.

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The dollar amount of the time value varies between different stocks. In part, it is based on the

current interest rate and whether or not the underlying stock pays a dividend. There are complex

formulas that determine the precise time value. Fortunately, individual investors don’t need to be

concerned with these formulas. There are a number of hedge funds and institutions that trade

these markets and they will keep the options price very near to the calculated values. If the price

of the option drifted too far from the calculated value, these traders would be able to make a risk-

free arbitrage trade by buying or selling the option and the underlying stock at the same time to

take advantage of the difference. Arbitrage trading is defined as risk-free and simultaneous

buying and selling and is practiced by some very large traders. It is often done by high frequency

trading firms. Individual traders do not have access to the data needed to execute very short-term

arbitrage trades.

As an example of an arbitrage trade, if an option is underpriced by 25 cents a share, a hedge fund

could buy the option and sell the underlying stock short at the same time. They could then

exercise the option to capture the gain of 25 cents a share and cover their short position to realize

a risk-free profit. They can do all four trades within seconds and large traders pay very little in

commissions which means they could benefit from price moves that are less than a penny in

some cases. Their participation in the markets means that options pricing will almost always be

fair and accurate and individual traders can accept the prices in the market at any time. It also

means individuals are unlikely to find mispriced options because these Wall Street firms have

faster computers and access to real-time market data with no delay.

Traders who are looking to profit from an earnings report that is about to be released could

maximize their gains by using the options which will expire soonest since the time value will be

lower than options with months before expiration. Those looking to use options as a low cost

way to take advantage of a large move that they expect to unfold over weeks or months would

use options with more time to expiration and they would pay for a higher time value. In that case,

the cost of the option would still be less than the cost of the stock and the trader could profit from

their opinion even after considering the cost of the time value in the option premium.

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Volatility

The third factor in determining an option’s price is the volatility of the underlying stock. The

larger the price swings, the more volatile the market is and the greater the chance that the

underlying stock will reach the strike price before the expiration date.

Consider IBM which traded between $180 and $210 a share in a twelve month period. The risk

and reward associated with a call option that has a strike price of $300 and expires in thirty days

is very small and the cost of the option would be small as well. It is unlikely that a stock will

move 40% in thirty days when it has only moved about 15% in the past year.

However, Apple (AAPL) doubled over those twelve months. An option with 30 days to

expiration and a strike price 40% above the current price would be more likely to have some

value at expiration and the cost of the option on AAPL would be higher than the cost of a similar

option on IBM. More volatile stocks will have higher options prices than less volatile stocks.

Large traders calculate the value of volatility in a particular option and the possibility of risk-free

arbitrage trades ensures that the markets are correctly pricing volatility. The presence of large

traders hunting for the rare mispriced option makes it easier for individual to trade options since

they can generally ignore options pricing formulas.

To fully value an option requires using complex formulas such as the Black-Scholes pricing

model, access to real-time market data, and historical data for the options contract, previous

options on the underlying stock, and the underlying stock. Individual traders would not gain an

edge over large traders by doing these calculations. While they should understand the basic

components of options pricing, it is more important to spend their limited time developing

strategies that can deliver triple-digit returns.

The Greeks

This is another area of options theory that is not absolutely required to trade basic strategies, but

is included so you can more fully understand options. The Greeks are used to quantify the factors

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that affect an option’s price. There are five Greeks - delta, gamma, theta, rho and vega – and

each one tells you how the option’s price should change when one of the pricing inputs change.

Delta defines how much an option's price is expected to change when the value of the underlying

stock changes by $1.00. Delta ranges from 0 to 1 for calls and 0 to -1 for puts. As an example, if

a trader owns a call option on IBM and the delta is 0.50, they should expect to gain 50 cents on

the option for each dollar gain in the price of IBM. A $1 decline in the stock of IBM should lead

to a loss of 50 cents on the call option. (Remember that an options contract is for 100 shares of

the underlying stock so the changes in the value of your trading account would be $50, which is

100 times the 50 cents per share change.)

For puts, the delta might be -0.50 and the put option should fall 50 cents if IBM went up by $1. If

IBM declines by $1, the value of a put option with a delta of -0.50 should increase by 50 cents.

As the price of the underlying stock changes, the delta on an option will change. Gamma, the

second Greek, estimates how much delta should change for every $1.00 move in the underlying

stock. When gamma is low, delta should change very little over time and when gamma is large

you should expect to see delta move significantly even for small price moves in the underlying

stock.

Continuing with IBM as an example, if the stock price changes by $1 and gamma is 0.25, then a

trader should expect to see the delta of the option change from 0.50 to 0.375. In this case, the

delta would change by 25% (old delta of 0.50 is multiplied by the gamma of 0.25, 0.50*0.25 =

0.125; the product of old delta and gamma is subtracted from the old delta to find the new delta,

0.50 – 0.125 = 0.375)

Theta is used to define the value of the time decay in an option. An option includes some time

value and that value declines as you get closer to the expiration date of the option. That decrease

in the time value is known as “time decay” because the time value of any option will decay to

zero at expiration. Theta estimates how much the value of the option changes every day based

solely on the time decay.

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Rho measures how much the price of an option will change if the short-term interest rate changes

by 1%. Because interest rates rarely change and when they do they change they tend to move

slowly, many traders ignore rho.

Vega is the Greek used to measure the impact that volatility has on the price of an option.

Specifically, vega will tell you how much the value of an option should change if the volatility of

the underlying stock changes by 1%. Vega will be at its highest when the options contract is at-

the-money and vega will decrease as the underlying stock moves away from the option’s strike

price.

Each of the Greeks can be used to develop an options strategy. For example, if a trader thinks

that a stock will make a large price move, then an option with a high delta could offer the largest

possible gains. This is because the value of the option will change along with the value of the

underlying stock and a high delta will deliver the most gain on an option for each dollar price

move in the underlying stock. Options with a high rho could be the best trading candidates when

the Federal Reserve is expected to make a change in interest rate policy.

Option Trading Strategies

While there are a number of options strategies a trader can use, most individuals who trade

options limit themselves to buying calls or puts and those looking for income can also write

covered calls.

In general, there are two types of options trades: directional trades and spread trades. Directional

trades are used when you think you know which direction the price trend will move, whether it’s

up, down, or sideways. Spread trades use multiple options contracts and do not require you to

have a strong opinion on the likely direction of prices. As with any other trading strategy, there

are benefits and risks with both.

Directional trades allow for more potential profits when a stock makes a big move in the

direction you expected. The downside is that you could lose all of the money you invest in an

options contract with a directional strategy. Spread trades generally have less upside potential but

offer a higher probability of winning and usually have less dollar risk than a directional trade.

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Long Call

The simplest strategy for a bullish trader would be to purchase a call option. (A bearish trader

would buy a put option.) This is a clear directional trades and the trader profits by correctly

predicting the direction of the trend.

You could buy a call if you are bullish on IBM, for example. If we assume that IBM is trading at

$200, a call option with a strike price of $150 would allow you to participate in the price move

with defined risk. A call option with a week to expiration would cost about $50 and if IBM

closed at $210 at expiration, the option would be worth $60 ($210 – $150 to exercise the option).

You would make $10 (a 20% gain on your trading capital instead of the 5% gain that someone

owning the stock would realize). If IBM closed at $190, you would lose $10 since you could

exercise the option at $150 and sell the stock at $190 for a $40 profit to offset the $50 you spent

on the option. You could never lose more than $50 no matter how far IBM falls. If IBM closed at

$200, you would break even but would not own the right to participate in IBM’s future gains

after expiration.

That would be an example of using an in-the-money put which reduces your risk but delivers

smaller profits than at-the-money or out-of-the-money options. An at-the-money call on IBM

with a week until expiration might cost 10 cents and if the stock gains $1, you would make 90

cents a share or a 900% profit. An out-of-the-money call with a strike price of $205 and a week

until expiration might cost about 15 cents and would deliver gains to you if IBM closed above

$205.15 at expiration. While the risk is small because the price of the option is so low, the

chances of large gains with an out-of-the-money option are also small.

In almost all cases, an at-the-money call will offer the best reward-to-risk ratio for a short-term

trade.

There will also be calls available with a month or more time before expiration. In these cases,

you are paying for time and the profits will be lower than you’d realize on a call with less time to

expiration. An IBM at-the-money call with one month to expiration might cost $4 and a call with

three months to expiration might cost $7. These options are often thought of as less risky since

they expire in the future and traders believe there is a greater chance the stock will reach the

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strike price. However, a trader could buy the shorter-term options and add contracts in the later

months as the time value declines.

Traders with limited capital who want to own IBM for the long-term could use options with two

years or more to expiration. These calls might cost $20, about 10% of the price of the stock. By

buying multiple calls, a trader can make more money in the long-term if the stock moves up.

Long Put

When traders expect a market decline, they can use puts. Bears would buy a put option to profit

from their expectation of lower prices. Puts increase in value as the underlying stock decreases in

value. At-the-money puts generally offer the best for the bang. Out-of-the-money puts can be

used as a hedge against market crashes. If you are concerned about a 20% market drop, a put

with a strike price that is at least 20% below the market could help you recover potential losses

from stocks that you own during a market crash.

Covered Call

A slightly more complex strategy is to write a covered call. This is also a type of directional

trade that generates income. If you own a stock like IBM but you think the price is going to go

down in the short-term, you could sell a call option against the shares you own. You have the

option exercise risk covered even before you write the option. If IBM goes significantly higher,

the option buyer will want to exercise the call option and buy your stock. If IBM falls, you keep

the money the option buyer paid you, in effect lowering your cost basis on the stock.

Selling an options contract to open a position is also known as writing an options contract.

Covered call writing is gaining in popularity among small investors. This strategy offers some

protection against a substantial drop in the price of stocks. The ability to write the calls also

generates income in a sideways market. While we are looking for strong up or down trends to

profit from in trading, markets spend the majority of their time moving sideways. This reality

makes covered calls an excellent strategy for income investors.

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Short Call

This is the same idea we saw with the covered call, except you wouldn’t own the underlying

stock, creating unlimited risk if you are wrong. Traders expecting prices to fall can write a call

option and profit from the money they collect from the option’s buyer. However, there are some

important considerations in deciding whether to write call options. First, while some initial profit

is guaranteed by the receipt of the premium, the amount of that premium represents the

maximum amount of profit from the trade. Regardless of what the underlying stock does, the call

writer has no opportunity for a higher profit. Second, because the writer of a call incurs an

obligation, rather than a right, to deliver the underlying stock, risk is theoretically unlimited. For

most traders, selling calls with limited profit potential and unlimited risk is not a good strategy. It

takes a great deal of experience and market knowledge to find profitable opportunities with this

strategy.

Short Put

Selling a put option is a strategy to consider when you think prices are going to go higher. By

selling the put, you collect the premium. If prices go up, the option expires worthless and you

keep the premium. If prices fall, the put buyer can exercise their right to put the stock to you and

force you to buy the stock at a price above the current market. The problem with this strategy is

the same that we saw with the short call strategy. In exchange for a small premium which

represents the maximum profit, the trader with a short put position faces unlimited risk.

Straddles allow a trader to take positions on both sides of the market (straddle the strike price)

and profit in either an up or down market with properly selected calls and puts.

Long Straddle

The buyer of a straddle is said to have a long straddle position. To do this, you would buy both a

call and a put option, typically when both are trading at-the-money. You might do this if you saw

a market that has been consolidating for some time. In any market, we tend to see periods of

relative calm followed by large price moves. The longer the consolidation lasts, the more likely it

is to end and prices will either rise or fall when they break out. Since you can’t know for certain

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in advance which way they’ll move, a straddle allows you to capture the profits in either

direction. If prices go up, the call will be profitable and the trader will take a small loss on the

put option while still enjoying the upside gains from the call. A decline will lead to the put

delivering profits while the call suffers a small loss. If the market does not make a major move,

both sides of the trade will expire worthless. Your risk is limited to the price you paid for the call

plus the price of the put.

Short Straddle

Short straddles involve selling both calls and puts to establish you initial position. Since there is

unlimited risk in selling options, this strategy should only be used if you expected the market to

remain range-bound, since little price movement would lead to both options expiring worthless.

This strategy has a great deal of risk and should be strictly limited to traders with extensive

market knowledge and a plan to limit the risks, perhaps with futures on indexes or another

advanced trading strategy.

Strangles are similar to straddles, but use contracts that are out of the money when the trade is

initiated. This makes the premiums of a strangle less expensive than the premiums in a straddle

trade.

Long Strangles

To enter a long strangle position a trader purchases an out-of-the-money call and an out-of-the-

money put option. Both the call and the put have the same expiration date and are for the same

underlying stock, but have different strike prices. Like a straddle, this strategy is used when a

trader thinks that the market will make a large price move but isn’t sure on the direction. Because

it uses out of the money options, it costs less to initiate than the straddle.

Short Strangles

If a trader believes that the market is going to continue to trade within a range, bouncing between

support and resistance levels, selling a straddle involving an out-of-the-money put and an out-of-

the-money call will allow the trader to pocket the premiums. Since the options have lower

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premiums, the profit potential of a strangle is less than that of a straddle, while the risk remains

unlimited.

Spreads involve the simultaneous purchase of one option and the sale of another option on the

same underlying stock. In a call spread you would do this to reduce the cost of buying the call by

selling another call on the same stock. Put spreads reduce the costs of a strategy built around a

bearish market outlook.

Some strategies, like the backspread, involve buying and selling multiple contracts. The idea

with this strategy is to reduce the cost of a position by selling short some options contracts to buy

other options. For example, by selling an at-the-money call, you can use the premium received to

buy several, less expensive out-of-the-money calls. If the stock makes a large move higher, this

position would deliver a profit to the trader. A small price move means the out-of-the money

options are likely to expire worthless and the profits should cover the loss on the at-the-money

call sold. If the stock falls, the premium on the call that was sold should result in the trade at least

breaking even.

In a backspread, the trader will end up buying more option contracts than they sold. It’s possible

that the trader will spend more money to buy the options than the trader receives in premiums for

the contracts they sold. The goal of a backspread is to make it less expensive to establish an

options position. This is a very complex strategy generally only used by large traders.

Debit Spread

Sometimes a backspread will be done so that the option that you are selling pays for the purchase

of other options and leaves you with a small credit balance. Other times, the spread will require

the investor to use money in their account because the premiums received don’t cover the full

cost of the options being purchased. When the options you buy cost more than the ones you sell,

that creates a debit spread.

There is an immediate initial loss, since money is being taken out of your account to open the

position. To initiate a bull call spread, you buy a call option that is at-the-money or slightly in-

the-money. At the same time, you will sell an out-of-the money call. The maximum gain on the

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position is the difference between the strike prices and the most you can lose is the amount of the

debit. When done very often, the small gains can deliver sizable profits to traders.

Credit Spread

Credit spreads result from selling options that are worth more than the ones you’re buying. They

derive their value from the time decay premium and are a low risk strategy.

When establishing a credit spread, a trader simultaneously buys and sells options having two

different strike prices. A trader who is bearish on a stock could establishes a credit spread by

buying an at-the-money put option and selling an out-of-the-money option with the same

contract month. The options bought will have a lower cost than the options that are sold.

You show an immediate profit due to the cash received when you initiate a credit spread. The

maximum reward, however, is limited to the difference between the strike prices of the options

contracts.

Butterfly Spread

Butterfly spreads are used by traders who believe that a stock will not experience significant up

or down movements in the near term. This strategy involves using three separate options

contracts, making it a little more complex than the other spreads we’ve looked at. Using calls as

an example, to initiate a butterfly spread, you would buy one call at the lowest strike price, sell

two calls at the middle strike price, and buy one call at the highest strike price. It could result in

either a credit or debit spread after all those orders are executed.

Potential profits and risk are limited, but commissions can be significant. In this example, you

would be opening positions in four option positions and even very small commissions can

rapidly eat away at any potential profits. This could lead to eight commissions being charged,

which represents a significant hurdle to profits.

Calendar Spread

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A calendar spread or time spread is the sale of an option with a nearby expiration date and the

simultaneous purchase of the same option, with the same strike price, that has an expiration date

that is farther in the future. The theory is that the time value of the near-term option will erode

more quickly than the time value of the option that is more distant in the future. Should this

occur, the spread between the prices of the two options will widen and you will profit.

Using Options Strategies

When you buy a stock, you believe that the price will rise. By using an at-the-money call option,

you can supercharge profits on winning trades. This strategy also limits your risk to the price of

the option since you can never lose more than you invest when buying an option. You should

always consider the options that are trading closest to their expiration date since they will have

the least time value and deliver more profits, on a percentage basis, if the stock moves higher.

Options can be used to increase gains and limit risks. You will generally see larger percentage

gains with winning options trades compared to owning a stock because options require less

trading capital. You will also see lower dollar losses on losing options trades compared to

owning a stock because the 100% loss of a small amount of money is often less expensive than a

smaller percentage loss on a large amount of money.

Aggressive traders should consider options as a powerful trading strategy. Long-term

investments should probably be made directly into the actual stocks if you intend to own them

for years. But short-term trades could be more profitable with options and it possible that you

can routinely turn double-digit gains into triple-digit gains with options.