Beginner help: Call Options

No it is not Newbie thinking.

  • Due to the volatility of options maximum loss on long option trades should 100%.
  • What is down 90% can go up 1000%.
  • No reason to lock in a 90% loss.
I did notice what you were pointing out, I’m on the lookout for that shift or any shift next week, we shall see.

my point was when you only have $3k left on a $30k position, I could wait and see if things would pivot or turn around even slightly. I do understand that I could have / should have acted differently when I was down $2-5k.

thanks for the insight - I need to pay more attention to Imp volatility.
 
Ok your call options' losses is limited already; it's only going to be your purchase price which is $600*100*0.5= $30,000 (I dunno how you get $29,000) assuming you are going to hold it until expiration and it's going to expire worthless otherwise there is always a chance that the underlying stock will go up and you will be able to make some money. If you really feel that there will be no chance that the stock will go up, then you should sell it now at 0.30 and at least your loss will only be (0.3-0.5) X 600*100 = $-12000 otherwise you are going to lose out on price and time decay even if the underlying is gaining value.

The only few things that you can do to potentially "limit your losses". One is to buy puts so if the underlying goes down in value, you can potentially earn some profit but this combo would only work if the underlying's price moves a lot either way, i.e. has high volatility otherwise you are still going to lose money and even more money potentially but not infinite losses though. Another is to try to short the shares when the share price is higher than the strike on your call options if you really believe that the shares will go down in value in time, then this might be worth the shot. When worse comes to worst, you can always stop out on the shares and cash out on the call option. Again, not a guarantee of success but will not result in infinite losses either.

Not sure what kind of scenarios you have tried in the IB software that resulted in infinite losses...

Thanks for the thorough reply! The cost basis was something close to 0.487 (I averaged down when I thought I was getting a great deal)

i thought about shorting the stock but it is now in the low $1 range and my stroke is at $4.

I can only be comforted by the fact that I made my gains on the stock - this was a very irresponsible investment on my part!

but I’ve learned a lot...!

Thank you all for the great advice, perspective and insight!
 
I did notice what you were pointing out, I’m on the lookout for that shift or any shift next week, we shall see.

my point was when you only have $3k left on a $30k position, I could wait and see if things would pivot or turn around even slightly. I do understand that I could have / should have acted differently when I was down $2-5k.

thanks for the insight - I need to pay more attention to Imp volatility.



That's correct ..... and my posts supports your decision to stay in the trade.
 
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