Call On A Put

  

If there was a 1920s musical about options trading, this might have been the name of Cole Porter song. Instead, we've got "Begin the Beguine."

A call on a put is a relatively simple concept, though it can seem a little complicated if you're a newbie to the options market. To enact the strategy, you buy a call option on a put option.

Remember: in options trading, a call option is the right (but not the obligation) to buy some underlying asset. In this case, the underlying asset is a put option on a separate underlying asset (like a stock, a bond, a commodity or a currency). A put is the right to sell a certain asset and represents a way to bet that the price of the underlying asset will go down.

A call on a put is one of four different compound options (which basically means an option that comes inside another option...like a Russian doll). You think a stock will go down. You don't want to take the risk of shorting the stock directly. However, you're also not ready to use a put option just yet...so you go one step removed: you acquire the right to a put option. This allows you more time to figure out if your guess about the stock is right. (See Call on a Call).

This type of strategy isn't exactly efficient (you have to pay for the call, then if you exercise it, you have to pay for the put). It can also involve a good deal of volatility, because now you're using a derivative of a derivative.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What Is a Put Option?83 Views

00:00

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

00:07

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

00:11

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

00:37

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

00:42

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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options expire after December whatever like the third Friday of the month it's

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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".]

02:36

raunchy. yeah well that's naked put options.

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that's what they really are people.

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