Option Basics

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Hello Snake,


Yes, you’ve got it pretty much right in a nutshell, however, here’s something to think about which might add to Wayne’s excellent answer.

While this subject has been covered elsewhere in the derivative area, essentially the option price is the premium a seller of the option requires like the premium you pay to an insurance company. Think of it like that and the values will start to make sense.

Essentially writing (selling) options can be seen as issuing an insurance policy to the other party, or perhaps a bet that the option will go down in price and can either be left to expire worthless or bought back at a cheaper rate later. Hence the premium (price) demanded is in part a market driven value (included market maker tactics and involvement, especially in less liquid a markets) and in part a theoretical value.

Option pricing is an involved process since you are dealing with a range of concepts simultaneously in order to arrive at a theoretical valuation on one level as you know, and an actual market price on another.

Various pricing models have been developed in an attempt to establish relatively objective methods of valuing an option at a particular price over an underlying financial instrument at a particular time.

The two dominant mathematical models which have pages of formulas involved are “Black and Scholes” and “Binomial” (I prefer Binomial since it tends to be more robust in my view).

The key attributes of each option makes it unique in the way it will perform given movement in time and price.

Hence inputs into the model as you have identified are time to expiry, strike (or exercise) price, value of the underlying the option is over, dividends, and the interest rate component. In addition this gets complicated because of “volatility” which encompasses the inflation of the theoretical flat price since the effects of supply and demand inflate the option value, and volatility measures this level (this has been covered in detail on many of the derivative threads).

All these inputs result in a theoretical value, and then the market conditions alter this as an expression of volatility. Hence the price is the base value inflated by the odds the selling side are giving, very much like the way a bookmaker discounts some contenders in a horse race which are unlikely to win, while increasing the cost on others they consider more likely to win, or sometimes in order to hedge their book.

So, in your example, if the option was an out of the money call with 2 months to expiry, with a volatility of “X”, and a specific interest rate, and the underlying was trading at “Y”, you’d arrive at a theoretical value. Then the fun begins since there will probably be a spread between the bid and the ask, which will be jumping around as the underlying trades – each with its own fluctuating value and volatility measure.

Since no one has a crystal ball, the valuation is based on what the market thinks is likely to happen which is where the shadow falls between the theory and the practice.


Hope that helps!


Regards


Magdoran

Thanks Magdoran for the detailed post. I m just exploring using options and have much study to do before I start trading them. As always your help is appreciated.

Regards
Snake

 

[Magdoran]

Thanks Magdoran for the detailed post. I m just exploring using options and have much study to do before I start trading them. As always your help is appreciated.

Regards
Snake

You’re welcome Snake,


Incidentally, I forgot to mention exercise type – European which can only be exercised on the expiry day, or American which can be exercised at any time including the expiry day. The American exercise tends to be slightly more expensive...

Mag

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

You’re welcome Snake,


Incidentally, I forgot to mention exercise type – European which can only be exercised on the expiry day, or American which can be exercised at any time including the expiry day. The American exercise tends to be slightly more expensive...

Mag

Mags,

Thanks. What are your gut feelings on trading Aussie options?

 

[Magdoran]

Mags,

Thanks. What are your gut feelings on trading Aussie options?

Hello Snake,


Have a look at the links below to the “Options Mentoring” thread which covered a lot of the relevant issues over a year ago, much of which is still relevant if comparing the Australian market with the US.

I have also posted comments on a range of issues with the Australian options market but don’t have time to sift through my posts right now, but if you do some searches and look through the derivative area, there has been a lot of comments in detail about my experience with a range of options strategies, and commentary on trading tactics when dealing with lower liquidity options and market makers.

In terms of equities, I prefer the Australian scenario over the US for the reasons outlined in the discussion in the links (you can browse through that thread, there was a lot of ground covered in it).

But like every market, there are strengths and weaknesses. In technical analysis terms, I think commodities and indexes tend to trend the best, but sometimes some stocks present attractive opportunities to trade, and I have found my best performance is in the Australian market despite the apparent low liquidity, but the losses tend to be amplified due to spread risk in the less liquid series, especially the “flex options” (they have no market maker obligations to make a market).

I find that generally if using options in Australia that position trading or longer term trading are more suited to this instrument than intra day trading (which is extremely hard to do with options).

Why not try doing a search by member, and have a read through my derivative posts and you’ll get the picture, I put a lot out there...


Hope that helps!


Regards


Magdoran

This is a good point Mag'

All the points you make are valid.

Yes, I can see exactly what you are saying Mag.

Ok, the point I was making about US Vs Australia is this:

It is a real pleasure to find someone else with such an interest in Aussie options!

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Hello Snake,


Have a look at the links below to the “Options Mentoring” thread which covered a lot of the relevant issues over a year ago, much of which is still relevant if comparing the Australian market with the US.

I have also posted comments on a range of issues with the Australian options market but don’t have time to sift through my posts right now, but if you do some searches and look through the derivative area, there has been a lot of comments in detail about my experience with a range of options strategies, and commentary on trading tactics when dealing with lower liquidity options and market makers.

In terms of equities, I prefer the Australian scenario over the US for the reasons outlined in the discussion in the links (you can browse through that thread, there was a lot of ground covered in it).

But like every market, there are strengths and weaknesses. In technical analysis terms, I think commodities and indexes tend to trend the best, but sometimes some stocks present attractive opportunities to trade, and I have found my best performance is in the Australian market despite the apparent low liquidity, but the losses tend to be amplified due to spread risk in the less liquid series, especially the “flex options” (they have no market maker obligations to make a market).

I find that generally if using options in Australia that position trading or longer term trading are more suited to this instrument than intra day trading (which is extremely hard to do with options).

Why not try doing a search by member, and have a read through my derivative posts and you’ll get the picture, I put a lot out there...


Hope that helps!


Regards


Magdoran

Thanks Magdoran.

I shall dig deep and read.

Regards
Snake

 

[ducati916]

Mag.

The Option strike spreads can be overcome with a hybrid.

jog on
d998

 

[Magdoran]

Mag.

The Option strike spreads can be overcome with a hybrid.

jog on
d998

Absolutely Duc, fully agree –


I think the suggestion here is that you can use a combination of futures, options, options on futures, CFDs, and a range of other derivative products like swaps and forwards, CMOs, CDOs if relevant…

But this is getting quite involved. I recognise that there are arbitrage dimensions using this kind of approach, hence it really is a smorgasbord of choice out there, but you really need to know what you’re doing.

What I found was that it helps sometimes not to overly complicate things especially when you’re starting out. However, there is a “rich” history of clever derivative plays in the past, especially at the institutional level that netted significant sums!

Food for thought!


Mag