Overwrite

  

Categories: Derivatives

There are two sides to every option contract. Someone buys it. Someone sells it. The person who buys the option pays the seller to get it. Put that another way, the seller receives money (called a premium) when the option contract is written.

Overwriting is a strategy to collect these premiums. The writer of the options contract either puts the strike price very high or very low, with the expectation that the underlying asset won’t reach that level. They expect the contract to expire on exercised.

You sell a call option for shares of BAC at $40 a share, with an expiration a month from now. You get $1.50 for selling the contract. The stock is currently trading at $25. You think its very unlikely that the stock will rise 60% by the expiration date. You're technically on the hook to deliver those 100 shares of BAC if the option gets exercised. But you think that's likely not going to happen. Most likely, shares won't get anywhere near $40 and the option will expire unused. And you get to pocket the $1.50.

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finance a la shmoop what is a put option? hot potato hot potato

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ow ow! yeah remember that game well nobody wanted the potato, poor thing. the

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players wanted to put it in someone else's hands. well put options kind [glue put around a flaming potato]

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of work the same way. a put option is the right or option or choice to sell a

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stock or a bond at a given price to someone by a certain end date.

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all right example time. you bought netflix stock at the IPO a zillion years

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ago at $1 a share. that's you know splits adjusted. all right now it's a hundred

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bucks a share. if you sell it you pay taxes on a gain of 99 dollars a share. in

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California that would be a tax of something like almost 40 bucks. well the

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stock was a hundred but you keep only something like 60. feels totally unfair.

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right so you really don't want to sell your stock but you're nervous about the [graph shown]

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next few months that Netflix will crater for a while and go down ten

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maybe twenty dollars. longer term though you think it'll hit 300. so this is the

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perfect setup to maybe look at buying some put options on Netflix. if the stock

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goes down your put options go up. with Netflix volatile but at a hundred bucks

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a share ,you look up the price of an $80 strike price put option expiring in

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December, and you know that's mid-september now .for five bucks a share

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you can protect your stock for the next few months .think about it like temporary [stocks placed in vault]

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term life insurance. you pay the five dollars a share in the stock goes down

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to 82 by mid December, worst of all worlds. well not only did you lose the $5

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a share but your stock has lost $18 in value. but had Netflix really cratered

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and gone to say $60 a share well you would have exercised your put and sold

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your shares at 80 bucks. well those put options you paid $5 for

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would be been worth 15 bucks a share. in buying that put option you've [equation shown]

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guaranteed that your loss will be no more than a $75 value for your Netflix

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position at least for that time period and ignoring taxes. well remember that

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usually when options expire, you then have no protection and your shares float

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along naked. naked? really who knew accounting could get so [paper put option goes "skinny dipping".]

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raunchy. yeah well that's naked put options.

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that's what they really are people.

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