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Profiting from a Stock’s Relative Stability over a Given Period of Time
July 04, 2017
Neutral Outlook

Profiting from a Stock’s Relative Stability over a Given Period of Time

Martin Noël

There are three situations in which options can be used to take advantage of changes in the price of an underlying stock: when prices rise, when they fall, and when they enter a relatively stable period. In this article, I will examine how to benefit from a relatively stable stock price. More specifically, we will look at an...

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Demystifying the Black-Scholes formula
June 27, 2017
Concepts

Demystifying the Black-Scholes formula

Martin Noël

The Black-Scholes formula is an option valuation model developed by two academics, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, who first described it in a 1973 article. The article appeared in the same year that the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) was founded, and the model effectively democratized the use of options. Previously,...

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7 years ago
Early Exercise of Options
May 30, 2017
Concepts

Early Exercise of Options

Martin Noël

Holding shares in a company gives the shareholder the following rights:*The right to transfer ownership, *The right to dividends, *Voting rights, and *The right to residual income and assets. What this means is that shareholders are free to sell their shares, take dividends when they are paid, vote at shareholder meetings and...

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7 years ago
Call Put Parity: How to Transform Your Positions
May 17, 2017
Concepts

Call Put Parity: How to Transform Your Positions

Martin Noël

I have been told frequently – and surely so have you – that selling cash-secured puts is a very risky strategy. Haven’t you? The main reason put forward for not using this strategy is that you could be forced to buy the security, even if the company had just gone bankrupt. In this light, the strategy rightly raises fears....

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7 years ago
Bottom Fishing Cenovus? Hedging may be Appropriate
May 10, 2017
Bullish Outlook

Bottom Fishing Cenovus? Hedging may be Appropriate

Patrick Ceresna

Cenovus stirred up the Canadian oil industry back on March 29th with an announcement on the $17.7 billion-dollar purchase of ConocoPhillips’ Canadian oil sand assets. To say the deal was not well received is an understatement as the stock dropped over 10% on the announcement and continued to actively distribute lower. From...

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7 years ago
Delta: Assessing Probabilities Based on the Break-even price
May 07, 2017
Concepts

Delta: Assessing Probabilities Based on the Break-even price

Martin Noël

As we saw in an earlier article, delta measures how much an option’s price moves in relation to a change in the price of the underlying asset. Delta is a variable from the Black-Scholes option pricing model, and it is also used in the industry as an approximation of the probability that the option will be in-the-money at...

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7 years ago
It’s Good to be the Insurer
May 04, 2017
Risk Management

It’s Good to be the Insurer

Hans Albrecht

  Option pricing, or insurance, is a relative value product. For instance, a $300 annual premium for $1 million of life insurance coverage for a young, healthy individual is reasonable. However, that same $300 price tag to insure a 65 year-old smoker with high blood pressure is way too cheap. When it comes to life...

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7 years ago
Purchasing Put Options or Selling Call Options to Protect Oneself? (Third and Last Part)
May 02, 2017
Concepts

Purchasing Put Options or Selling Call Options to Protect Oneself? (Third and Last Part)

Martin Noël

In the two previous articles, we compared purchasing put options as a protective strategy with selling covered call options. The first article used options with monthly expirations, and the second article used options expiring after our period of analysis, from April 17, 2015 to January 22, 2016. In both cases, the analysis led...

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