What You Should Know Before Trading Options
I’m going to break down the complexities and differences between options and trading stocks. First off, stocks are simply one-dimensional trading vehicles, the dimension of “price movement”. For example, you can go long a stock if you forecast a rise in the price of the underlying asset. You, as the stock trader, don’t need to worry about time or changes in volatility affecting the outcome of your trade. You only need to focus on the asset’s price movements.
Options, however, involve these other two dimensions just mentioned, plus the dimension of price as well. So options are actually three-dimensional trading vehicles based on price, time and volatility. To compare stock and options in a practical sense, let’s consider this scenario:
A stock takes a full year to move up 10%. If you bought and held on to it, you just made 10%. However, you may have made nothing at all or even lost money if you just bought an option.
So let’s talk about why the option trader lost money even though the stock went up. It’s quite simple; the option trader lost the time value of their options. Each option has time premium as a part of the option price, and if the move doesn’t happen fast, then the option trader will probably lose money if they’re simply buying Calls. The volatility will most likely drop on the asset as the price rises, as well, and this will also cause the price of the option to fall.
So, hopefully you can see that in order to trade options, we really need to be educated. Entry level option traders usually buy Calls and Puts, and they don’t understand why they lose money when the underlying asset goes they direction they are hoping. Remember, when trading options, you are not trading a single dimension; you are really trading a 3 dimensional asset.
Learn more about the Options Course by San Jose Options. Visit us and receive a FREE 45 MINUTE VIDEO on Option Greeks and see what this new knowledge can do for you.






July 20, 2010 | Posted by Donald Scott
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