Trading Options " Road To Wealth Or Short Cut To Bankruptcy?

By Johnny M Junior

Trading options has several advantages over trading in ordinary shares (stocks). This method of trading can also be high risk if you do not know what you are doing. We will briefly look at the different scenarios.


Steps to Success with Option Trades



The first advantage is that you can realize much bigger profits than if you invested the same amount of money in ordinary shares. The reason is what traders call leverage. If the price of a particular share is for example $100 and you have only $100 to invest, you can only buy a single share. The price of a so-called 'call option' could be as little as $.20. If this is so, then it would cost you $20 to control 100 shares of stock.

Let's now say a call option on that stock sells for $.20. If this is true, then you can control 100 shares of that stock for only $20. Just imagine the leverage you have. This is what attracts many investors to option trading.

Nowadays, experienced option traders like to use option spreads. This is what seems to be the best and safest way to make money on the market. To do this, we buy and sell options, giving us a hedged position with very limited risk.

Many people also use trading options to hedge investments they already have. If you have an investment of $1000 in a share that recently went up with more than 25%, you want to hold on to your profits, but you don't want to sell the shares either because the price might rise even further. In comes put options. If you bought put options on that particular share their value will increase if the share price drops (with the same amount as the drop in the share price). Your investment will therefore be intact. This is a very common hedging technique, and it's something to be studied more in detail. Whatever you do, make sure you do your homework before trading options. - 31391

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