Options for Beginners—Part 1

For the sake of new and would-be traders, options instructor Russ Allen, of Online Trading Academy, offers the first part of his Options for Beginners series in which he highlights the three modes that options can be used for; fast growth, protection, or current income.

A few years ago, I wrote a series of articles for people who are completely new to the idea of trading options. Options are a really interesting and potentially profitable instrument when used properly and are certainly my favorite. Since this letter has new readers all the time, I felt the time was right to do another set. So, beginning this week, we’ll cover the basics of options for the sake of new traders and would-be traders.

The reason many people are attracted to options is because of the leverage available. Options can potentially make a lot of money on a small investment. The people who use options like this are speculating.

A completely different set of investors uses options in a completely different way, for protection of their investment in stocks or other assets. These investors are not speculating; they are hedging.

And yet a third group uses options as part of a conservative strategy to generate cash flow, either a modest amount with very modest risk or a potentially larger amount with somewhat greater risk.

These are the three modes in which options can be used; fast growth, protection, or current income. Almost everyone has a use for at least one of these. If that includes you, read on.

There are just two types of options, Puts and Calls. With just these two components we can build positions of endless varieties. The various types of positions are called options strategies.

Every option is related to some underlying asset. This can be a stock, an exchange-traded fund, or something else.  For our first examples we’ll assume that the underlying asset is a stock, the stock of the biotech company Actavis plc (ACT).

Let’s say, for the sake of example only, that we are very bullish on ACT. We like its business prospects and we like the price action shown on its chart. We think (let’s say) that ACT will be at a much higher price three weeks from now. We think it could easily move from its current level at $298.36 up to its recent high around $317.80, a 6% increase. Here is its chart as of April 23, 2015:

Click to Enlarge

If we bought ACT stock, for each hundred shares we could make $1980 if we’re right about this move. On the other hand, we will have to tie up $29,800 for each hundred shares (or half of that in a margin account).

An alternative would be to buy—not the ACT stock itself—but an option to buy that stock. If the stock then does go up in value we stand to make a profit. Options to buy stock are referred to as Call options. If we decide to exercise them, then we call away that stock at the specified price. We get the stock by paying the option seller the amount of money that was agreed on in the option deal.

NEXT PAGE: What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

For example, there are available options to buy ACT at $295 per share at any time in the next 56 days (through June 19, 2015). This $295 price is called the strike price for these call options. For each 100-share lot, the options cost $1380 ($13.80 per share). The price of an option is referred to as its premium. To buy these options we just make a few clicks in our brokerage software package and pay the $1380 premium. We then have the right to buy the ACT shares by paying an additional $295 per share or $29,500 for the 100-share lot. If we exercise that right, we will then own 100 shares of ACT. Our cost per share will be the $13.80 we paid for the call option plus the $295 that we will pay in addition to exercise. That’s a total of $295.00 + $13.80 = $308.80 per share.

We are not obligated to exercise our call options. We can hold on to them and wait for ACT to hit our target. If it does, then we could exercise our option and flip the stock at that time. If we’re still waiting when the options expire in June, if ACT at that time is anywhere above the $295 strike price, it will be in our interest to exercise the options. Otherwise we won’t bother.

Let’s look at the potential profit and loss on this trade. If ACT goes up to $317.80 as we expect, we could exercise our option and own the stock at a total cost of $308.80 as calculated above. We could then sell it for $317.80, a gain of $317.80 – $308.80 = $9.00 per share ($900 for the lot). That 6% move in the stock will have netted us a profit of over 65% on our $1380 investment.

If ACT goes nowhere and is still at its present price of $298.36 when the option expires, we will still be able to salvage a part of our cost. We could exercise the options at that time, buying the stock for $295, sell it at $298.36, and make positive cash flow on that transaction of $3.36 per share. Subtracting that from the $13.80 per share option cost, our net loss would be $13.80 – $3.36 = $10.44 per share.

And finally, if ACT goes down and stays below $295, there will be no point in exercising the option at all. We will then have lost our $13.80 per share option cost.

So, our worst-case loss is $1380. This is a lot less than the many thousands we could lose if we bought the stock itself and it cratered.

We need the stock to go up in order to make any profit. If it stands still we’ll lose money.

But if the stock does go up we can score to the tune of more than 10 times the percentage gain in the stock itself (65% of $1380 vs 6% of $29,836).

This amplification of the potential profit on the trade is the leverage that the speculative option buyers use in hopes of making big profits.

Is this a good trade? Could it be made better?

Tune in next time to find out.

By Russ Allen, Instructor, Online Trading Academy