Off-floor trader Rick Redmont gained his first experience trading stocks as a college student during the bull market of 1961. “I had $10,000, which turned into $20,000. I followed the Chartcraft (Inc.) point and figure book-but it didn’t really matter what you bought. The only thing that made you mad was if your friend’s stock [...]
Now, let’s consider stock and stock options for a moment. Consider the ubiquitous XYZ Corp., currently trading at $95 per share on 2/1/03. If you pay $4 per share for a March call on 100 shares of XYZ at the $100 strike price, you have acquired the right to buy 100 shares of XYZ for [...]
Options are one of the oldest trading vehicles man has ever used. Around a 1000 B.C Aristotle Thales predicted by the stars that there would be a bumper olive harvest and bought options on the use of olive presses.
When the harvest did in fact prove to be a great harvest Thales was able to rent [...]
Owning stock has only two, maybe three, possibilities. The stock goes up. Or the stock goes down. Or, as a third possibility, it does a little of both. If you buy a stock, all you want it to do is go up.
If you sell a stock short or close a position (or consider buying it [...]
Wouldn’t it be great if we could buy an option with five months left until expiration and sell an option with 2 months left until expiration for the same price? You couldn’t lose. Well we can’t. I love options spreads so much I realized something very important. We can buy a spread that has a [...]