Option Investing - How to Use without Gambling!

Option Investing - How to Use without Gambling!

Option investing strategies aren’t just for traders but can protect your portfolio as well

Many investors contrive not to meet option investing, believing the myth that it’s just for trading and a quick profit. The truth is that some options strategies can be used to diminish your investing risk Acquiring knowledge of how options work and some of the strategies will mean new tools to protect your portfolio and meet your financial goals.

We’ll cover the basics of options investing in this post, along with a couple of options strategies for protecting your portfolio. In coming posts, we’ll go deeper into investment strategies and how to use options without gambling.

What is Option Investing?

Options are also called derivatives because they ‘derive’ their value from another investment. The two types of options, calls and puts, can be bought on most other investments including stocks and commodities.

When you buy an option, you pay a premium in exchange for the right to buy or sell the underlying investment at a later date for a set price. Options investing can be confusing at first but can open up a whole new world of investing, both for trading and for reducing risk.

Call options are principled to buy an investment while put options are the principled to sell the investment.  Notice you get the ‘right’ to buy or sell a stock but not the obligation in options investing. This is important because it’s really where the value comes from in the investment.

Here call options are the right to buy something, put options are the right to sell something.

For example, if you buy call options on shares of SBIN for a strike price of 100 each and a December expiration. The strike price is the price fix to pay for the shares when the right expires in June. You might pay ₹5 for the right to buy the shares at that price, this is called the premium.

No matter what the price of SBIN does between now and December, you have the right to buy it at 100₹ per share. If the price jumps to 120₹ then you can buy the shares for 100₹ for an immediate gain of 15₹ each, the difference between the purchase price plus the premium you paid for the options and minus the current price.  

If shares of SBIN do not make it to 100₹ each, you don’t have to buy the stock for that amount. Your call options expire and you lose the premium but you can buy the shares for less than 100₹ in the open market.

Where call options are the principled to buy something, put options are the principled to sell something. If you buy a put option on shares of SBIN, you pay a premium and have the right to sell the shares for a certain price.

If the share price falls below your strike price, say that same 100₹ per share, then you can sell at that price even if the actual stock price is much lower.

You can also sell call or put options, collecting a premium from other investors. Selling options mean you’re taking the obligation to be on the other side of the investment if the options buyer wants to use their right to buy or sell the stock.

If you sold those call options on SBIN stock in the previous example, you would immediately collect the 5₹ premium from the investor. If the share price jumps then you would be obligated to sell the investor shares of SBIN for 100₹ each. If the share price fell below 100₹ then the investor wouldn’t use their right to buy the shares.

Isn’t Option Investing fair for Risky and Traders?

The biggest myth about option investing is that it’s too risky for consistent investors and should only be used by traders looking to make a speedy profit.  Of course, option investing can be risky if you don’t know how to use it but it’s a tool and can actually help you minimise your investing risk as well.  

Naked investing is where you are making a bet that the price of a stock will go up or down. i.e Buying and selling options without owning the related stock.

You pay the premium for the option investing and collect the profits if the stock price goes the direction you predict. As long as you can buy an option contract for a fraction of what it costs to buy the stock, your profits are increased greatly.

In our example above, buying shares in SBIN would currently cost 104₹ each and you’d make a 15% return if the price went to 120₹ per share. If otherwise, you bought the call options for 5₹ each, you could sell the call option to another investor instead of actually buying the stock.

Since you’ve got the right to buy the shares for 100₹ and they’re currently worth 120₹ each, selling your call options would be worth at least 20₹ each for a profit of 300% on the investment!

For Sure, if shares were to fall below the 100₹ strike price then you lose your 5₹ premium and get nothing while someone buying the shares would have a small loss but still own the stock. This use of options investing is risky and many investors don’t necessitate the level of risk.

There is one more way to use option investing though, a way to reduce your investment risk and lead to cash from your investments. If you already own the related investment, then buying or selling call options can be a way to minimize the risk of falling stock prices.

Think about it, if you own 100 shares of Apple and then sell someone call options then you give them the right to buy the shares from you for a definite price. If the share price rises, you make money up to the price you sympathize to sell the shares. If the share price falls, you lose money on your investment in the stock but you keep the options premium that lessens the total amount you’ve lost.

Using Options deprived all the Risk.

Described in the example above. A covered call strategy is owning shares of stock and selling a call option. It’s called covered because your compulsion, to sell the shares from the call option is ‘covered’ by your ownership position in the stock.

The strategy limits your upside gain in the stock investment but can be a great way to reduce risk and make extra cash on your investment. Inherently, the money you collect selling the call option lowers your cost of buying the stock. The share price might fall from your original investment price but you might still have a profit because your new cost is lower.

Options Investing

Another fair-minded way to protect your investments through options investing is through buying puts. Remember, buying a put option gives you the right to sell a stock for a certain price. If you own shares of SBIN but are afraid that the next Quarter isn’t going to be well received, you can buy puts. If the price falls, you’ve got the right to sell your shares for the higher price. You’re basically limiting your losses to the price you can sell the put options.

For example, you own shares of SBIN at 104₹ and buy the 100₹ put options. If the share price increases, you profit on the shares you own and do nothing with the put options. If the share price falls below 100₹ then you can still sell the shares for that amount. You have a slight loss since you bought at 104₹ but have limited your losses.

Options Investing

There’s also a way to use put buying options to protect your whole investment portfolio and reduce your risk of a stock market crash. The portfolio put strategy is where you buy put options on the entire stock market, through puts on an index.

The principal of a portfolio put strategy is pretty simple though the details can be a little more complicated. If you own a portfolio of stocks, the individual investments might rise or fall depending on company news but the overall portfolio value may move closer to the market’s gains or losses. This goes back to the important idea of diversification, balancing out investing risks by owning a group of stocks.

At any moment if you sell a put option on an index that represents the stock market, you have the right to sell it for a certain price. If the stock market falls suddenly, the money you make on your put options helps to offset the losses on your individual stocks.

This kind of options investing is an indirect strategy to reduce your risk because your own stocks may not rise or fall exactly with the rest of the market. It could be a good thing if your stocks rise while the rest of the market falls, providing a profit on both your stocks and the put strategy.

Final words

A very informative summary of option investing is only a fraction of what you can do with options strategies, both for-profit and to reduce your investing risk. We’ll cover more investing strategies in future articles including how to get a discount on stocks you want to buy and how to generate cash using options.

Thank you so much. Have a profitable trading.!

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Learn option strategies

Options Strategies – A Mentorship Program

On September 01, 2019, We have launched a new mentorship program for Option strategies, in which we’ll discuss how can we deploy these Options strategies? What rules we should follow before taking a trade? And what should be our adjustments if the script is moving against your direction?



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