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Options trading can be profitable if done correctly. Many people take the plunge in options trading without any training or understanding about the different options contracts that they can trade. In the end they don’t have a clue when the options value starts going against them. Now for options buyers this option unlike futures limits their maximum liability to the option premium they had paid at the time of buying the options contract. The options market has caught the fancy of many investors and this is not surprising. The beauty of options is embedded in its very name. You have the options but not the obligation to buy or sell stocks at a given price by a given time.
Everyone knows the terms S&P 500 Stock Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). These are two world famous stock indexes. Infact every stock exchange around the world has got a stock index associated with it. You must have come across the term Index Options. So what are index options? In 1978, Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) began options trading on popular stock indexes such as the S&P 500 Stock Index. The CBOE options trades in multiples of $100 per index point. This is much cheaper than the $250 multiple per index point for the S&P futures contract.
S0 how do the index options work? Let’s take an example. Suppose the S&P 500 Index is at 1100 points. You have a bullish opinion of the market and are of the opinion that the S&P 500 Index will go further up. An index option allows the investor to buy the stock index at a set point within the given time period. Options premiums is one of the most important concept that you need to grasp before you actually start trading options. There are options Greeks that you need to understand. Time and volatility are two very important factors for an options contract. In case of an index options, what this means is that if any time for the next three months you decide to exercise your call option, you will get $100 for each point the index is above 1150. So you decide to purchase a call option at 1150 for three months for 50 points. In other words you paid an option premium of $5000.
So when an options contract loses value, you only lose the premium that you had paid while buying that contract. In that case you will only lose the premium of $5000 that you had paid to buy the call index option. Now, 1150 is the strike price of the index option. In case the S&P 500 Index does not rise above 1150, you can simply decide to not exercise your call option. Contrast this with S&P futures. In case of S&P futures, the downside risk is unlimited whereas in index options the downside risk is limited to only the premium that you had paid for the options contract. Call options are considered to be bullish. So for you to make a profit with this call option, the S&P 500 Index will have to rise above 1200 point within the next three months otherwise you will lose your premium.
In case the S&P Index had fallen to 1100 point, you would have recouped your options premium. Put options are considered to be bearish. A Put Index Option works in exactly the same way as a Call Index Option except that you make profit when the stock index goes down. If you had bought the put index options instead of the call index option in our example above, every point below the strike price of 1150 would have given you a profit of $100. There are many options trading strategies that you can apply. Each strategy has a specific objective. Options are highly dependent on the volatility of the market as well as time to expiry. As the options contract nears expiry, its premium starts decreasing. The more the options contract is away from expiry, the higher the premium you will have to pay. But the most important factor is the expected volatility of the market. Now the option premium that you pay is determined by the market and it depends on many factors like interest rates and dividend yield.
Index options premium all depends on the volatility of the market. The duller the market, the lower the index options premium. Well it depends on the expectations of the traders whether the market will move sufficiently in the near future for them to exercise their buy or sell rights. The more volatile the market, the higher then index option premium! Infact there are many factors that can affect the options premium like theta Vega, gamma. Now what are these terms and from where they have cropped up? These terms are known as the options Greeks. Before you start trading options, you need to learn what these terms means.
You can find many options types of options contracts. You will find futures options, currency options, stock options, ETF options and so on. Options offer investors far more trading strategies as compared to futures. Such strategies can range from highly speculative to highly conservative. Options are a far more basic instrument than the ETFs and futures. You can easily replicate any ETF or futures contract with an option but the reverse is not true.
So as said before, options can help you profit from a bullish market as well as from a bearish market. It all depends on how well you anticipate the mood of the market and devise your options trading strategy. In case, the market does not decline, you only lose the premium that you had paid for the put option. Suppose, you are afraid that the market is going to go down in the near future! You can protect yourself from this decline in the market by buying a out index option. When the market declines, the put increases in value. There are always two parties to a trade. In case of options, one is the options buyer and the other is the options seller. Options trading are a zero sum game. Either the options buyer wins or the seller wins. Both can’t. Now the seller of a call options believes that the market will not move sufficiently up in the near future so he/she can make money by writing a call options contract and selling it to someone who believes the maker will move up. Of course for anyone who buys an options contract there should be someone to sell the options contract to make a complete transaction.
So in a way, buying and selling of options contracts make options trading a zero sum game. Either the market will move up or it will not. Either the option seller will win or the options buyer will win. The development of the stock index futures and the index options was a major development in 1980s for investors and money managers. The buyers of the put options are in a way insuring their portfolio against possible market decline but who are the sellers of the put options. They are primarily those investors who are willing to buy those stocks but only at lower prices. Options are an important component of any money manager portfolio. Many hedging strategies now depend on options. Index options have some unique advantages. They already have the diversification inbuilt into them. But with stock index futures and options, investors were able to buy in some way the whole market such as represented by these stock indexes. Heavily capitalized firms in the major stock indexes like the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) have always attracted money because of their outstanding liquidity.
You can even find options contracts written on ETFs. ETFs give you the familiarity of the stocks but like index futures much higher liquidity and superior tax efficiency. The Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) gave the investor still more ways to diversify across all market with very low costs. There are many advantages to investing in options as compared to stocks. There are all sorts of options contracts now available in the market. Index options give the investors the ability to insure the value of their portfolios at the lowest possible prices and save on the transaction costs and taxes. Why don’t you try trading index options?
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