Investing General Discussion

Sanrith Descartes

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Not me, just see these kinds of posts whenever I check out /r/wsb and my ADD is just too strong to force me to me study how calls and puts work. Was hoping someone could break a real-life example down for me, what exactly they did and how they went to the moon.
If it's real, and it's doubtful since it's /web, they invested roughly 40k buying call options (betting the stock price went up). The price went up. They made like 90k profit on the trade.
 
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Fogel

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Where does the average cost $1.98 come from?
Thats how much the call option cost per share when they bought. So one call option would be 100 x 1.98 (100 shares per contract). They bought the 4/29 contracts which is why the gain is so big. The closer to expiration date, the more the call price moves. The downside is if the stock doesn't go up the contracts expire worthless and they lose everything.
 
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Blazin

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I was looking at banks as we move into a higher interest rate environment where they should thrive and I wanted to see where their loan money was going since defaults should start to begin to rise. I was surprised that only 4% of WFC loan dollars are out in credit cards. The data is a little dated so could be off a small bit.

View attachment 406963
Just remember that banks benefit from a steeper yield curve more than they do just "higher Rates" . They will struggle in this higher rate environment if we don't get some steepening back into the curve.
 
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Break

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Thats how much the call option cost per share when they bought. So one call option would be 100 x 1.98 (100 shares per contract). They bought the 4/29 contracts which is why the gain is so big. The closer to expiration date, the more the call price moves. The downside is if the stock doesn't go up the contracts expire worthless and they lose everything.
What exactly is the spread representing between the call option $1.98 avg and Current price $6.20? I don't quite get the relationship between that and the stock's actual price of over $600. I mean the stock price only moved like $30 or something like that, I dont' get where that $6.20 comes from.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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Might be a silly question, but does anyone here not know how to use/setup stock screeners in their various platforms? Quite a helpful tool in searching for new targets.

For example here is a partial screenshot of one. Partial in that it has too many factors to show without scrolling. This one is currently filtered to show PE from low to high. When searching for new game to hunt, screeners are a must-have tool in my opinion.

View attachment 406615
Lightning Lord Rule Lightning Lord Rule

The above on the left shows a partial of my selections in the screener. I tend to kitchen sink my screener so I don't have to make lots of screens. I just focus on the individual states I am currently checking and if I find a target I them already lots of other data in the screen.

Go into "stock screener" and make a new screen and save it. I generally set the screen for big caps and above and that limits my search down to 500 or so companies and then I can filter various columns to see the data I am looking for.

I add probably at least half of the total column options. It makes the screen scroll far to the right but I like only having one or two total screens to open.
 
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Blazin

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Would anyone like to explain to me in laymens terms what is happening here? (from /r/wsb)

View attachment 406991
Some answers given already detail below:

This morning at the open this buyer purchased 221 call contracts with a $630 strike for an average price of $1.98. Let's break down what that means.
1 call contract represents the right to buy 100 shares @ $630/per share by expiration. They paid $43,758 (221x100x1.98) for these calls options.

They expire on 4/29 (22 days from now) . Because they paid $1.98 a contract with a $630 Strike they have a $631.98 breakeven.

This is a chart of this option price movement today along with a chart of COST today
Capture.PNG

Capture1.PNG


So COST stock went up 4% today, this caused this bet that COST would close above $630 by 4/29 increase dramatically as it is now more likely to occur because the strike price is 4% closer than it was yesterday.

The intrinsic value of these call options remains $0.00 as COST still trades out of the money (below the strike) @ $608 .

The person who holds these calls however does not need to keep holding them, they could have closed them today and simply taken the profit. If COST fails to continue to climb to $630 over the next 22 days these call options will slowly lose their value expire worthless and the holder would be out their investment.

There is nothing particularly interesting about this trade outside of it's size. Most retail traders only hold a contract or two, some with bigger accounts maybe 5-10 contracts. For someone to risk $44k on calls is taking a significant position this is equivalent to a $7M dollar equity trade. So not that big by whale standards but big for retail traders.

Hard to talk about options without financial lingo so I hope this makes sense.
 
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Blazin

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What exactly is the spread representing between the call option $1.98 avg and Current price $6.20? I don't quite get the relationship between that and the stock's actual price of over $600. I mean the stock price only moved like $30 or something like that, I dont' get where that $6.20 comes from.
Don't know if my previous posts answers this but I'll address directly. The odds improved, that is where the price change from $1.98 to $6.20 came from. As I mentioned there is still no intrinsic value to the option it just became more likely to be a winner. This trade is not impressive from a option % gain perspective it's rather "meh". Much bigger moves occur if a option goes from being well out of the money to well into the money. For example if COST went above $630. So just think of it as a curve, the current price at the end of the day was closer to the strike than it was in the morning and that change in price (premium) is a result of the increased likelyhood of the stock price getting to the strike by expiration.
 
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Break

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Don't know if my previous posts answers this but I'll address directly. The odds improved, that is where the price change from $1.98 to $6.20 came from. As I mentioned there is still no intrinsic value to the option it just became more likely to be a winner. This trade is not impressive from a option % gain perspective it's rather "meh". Much bigger moves occur if a option goes from being well out of the money to well into the money. For example if COST went above $630. So just think of it as a curve, the current price at the end of the day was closer to the strike than it was in the morning and that change in price (premium) is a result of the increased likelyhood of the stock price getting to the strike by expiration.
It helping I think but I'm still missing the big picture. When he sold at $6.20 where did that $80k profit come from, who exactly lost $80k?
 

Zog

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It helping I think but I'm still missing the big picture. When he sold at $6.20 where did that $80k profit come from, who exactly lost $80k?
This is my favorite part.
 
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Blazin

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It helping I think but I'm still missing the big picture. When he sold at $6.20 where did that $80k profit come from, who exactly lost $80k?
I just logged off pc for the night so I can’t fully answer this. But first off he didn’t sell. They moneybwould come from the person who would then hold the contracts but the real answer is more complicated as the seller to him originally was the market maker and buyer if he sold would also likely be the market maker and it would probably be 10 paragraphs to fully explain this . But ignore all that for simplicity sake view contracts simply as shares and it’s no different than shares trading hands
 

Sanrith Descartes

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It helping I think but I'm still missing the big picture. When he sold at $6.20 where did that $80k profit come from, who exactly lost $80k?
Start here. It will help.

 
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Break

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Start here. It will help.

That did help a lot.

Correct me if wrong here: The option prices are set by the market makers based on some algorithm that they use to reward risky bets and those rewards are essentially paid for by those who lose money on the totality of all option trades. So in my $80K example above, the basic answer to "who pays the 80k" it's all the people who lost money on options up to that point? And if this trade would go through as is, a 80k swing would probably get the market maker to look carefully at how they weigh the odds going forward, in a never ending game of recalculation right?
 

Jysin

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You are so much better off fully understanding how equity trading (stock trading) works before you foray into options. There are a hell of a lot of moving parts to options, so it really isn't that easy to just quick explain their price movements.

Here's another source of info, and a great one at that for all things investing:

 
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Sanrith Descartes

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That did help a lot.

Correct me if wrong here: The option prices are set by the market makers based on some algorithm that they use to reward risky bets and those rewards are essentially paid for by those who lose money on the totality of all option trades. So in my $80K example above, the basic answer to "who pays the 80k" it's all the people who lost money on options up to that point? And if this trade would go through as is, a 80k swing would probably get the market maker to look carefully at how they weigh the odds going forward, in a never ending game of recalculation right?
Not really. Options are math. Thus the Greeks. Options are also leverage without borrowing (though of course you can borrow) asa contract represents 10 shares of the underlying. One thing to remember is most folks trading options aren't trading them looking to take possession of the underlying shares. They are trading to profit from the stock price moves and then ridding themselves of the contracts pre-expiry.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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You are so much better off fully understanding how equity trading (stock trading) works before you foray into options. There are a hell of a lot of moving parts to options, so it really isn't that easy to just quick explain their price movements.

Here's another source of info, and a great one at that for all things investing:

Cant stress this enough. Until you are really comfortable with all the ins and outs of equity trading, options plays are basically asking someone to take your money. Also, if you dont like math, options probably aren't for you.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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Lightning Lord Rule Lightning Lord Rule I had a few minutes so here is a screen cap of one of my basic screens. As I said i add tons of filters to it as more of an omnibus screener.

1649423033962.png


1649423075927.png

1649423121418.png


Once it is created I/You can always click on a filter and make an adjustment quick if I want to see a specific subset of that filter without making a new screener.
 
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Jysin

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Looks like the pattern of a shitty stock stagnant for years. (jokes)
 
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