Trading Options – What Does Trading Stock Options Really Mean?
Some people want to know about trading options and what it means for them. Before you understand this you have to know what the option market is all about.
Trading options means the option holders (you) are betting the price of the stock is going up or down in the future and you want to make money if it does. Options can also be used to hedge against large losses from your current position and used as a form of insurance, or you can also sell the insurance against someone else’s position and collect a premium from the buyer of the option.
Option trading started in 1973. By 2007 over 3 billion option contracts were traded. Trading options has and will continue to grow in popularity as it has been around for awhile.
Options are contracts that allow you to buy or sell a stock on before a certain day at today’s price. You find someone with the stock who agrees to let you buy or sell that stock in the future. You pay the stockholder some money now. If the stock price moves the way you expect, you could buy it or sell it at a price you agreed to because you have a contract that says so. Most contracts expire without any stock ever being purchased. This means what you thought would happen did not happen in time.
However, the contract holders that actually purchase stock can make a lot of money.
Trading options has 4 advantages. There is cost efficiency as they leverage their money into buying or selling more stock. There is less risk as they use less money for the option to purchase or sell the stock than if they actually purchased or sold the stock, and if they are wrong, they do not buy or sell. They have higher potential returns because the stock is not purchased unless the market moves and they can purchase more stock at that time with the options. There are more investment alternatives, they can hold an option to both buy and sell a stock (different contracts).
Option trading is not just for the stock market. Option trading is popular in the futures market, commodity trading and the forex market.
Buyers trading options are called call buyers. Sellers are called put buyers. If there is a demand for the stock of a company, the price goes up. When there is less demand, the price goes down. This sounds simple. However, knowing when this is going to happen takes lots of hard work and clear analysis of the company and the marketplace.
Trading options is a way to control more stock for less money. Is it for you? That all depends upon what sort of risk you are willing to accept. So if you are ever in a position where you can tolerate risk, they may be for you. On the other hand, you can still use options as a tool to hedge your long term positions, and to replace your stock holding as a money management tool, which was the intention of options originally. Options have since grown into more speculative based options, so keep this in mind and make sure you review all the neccesary materials before you jump right in and start trading options without first understanding what kind of risk you can accept.
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