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Anyone trade these LEAP calls before?

Posted on 6/29/16 at 7:36 pm
Posted by cokebottleag
I’m a Santos Republican
Member since Aug 2011
24028 posts
Posted on 6/29/16 at 7:36 pm
Read about them in the book The Big Short and seemed intriguing. Have done no further research so far. Anyone here ever buy one?
Posted by dabigfella
Member since Mar 2016
6687 posts
Posted on 6/29/16 at 8:20 pm to
it lets you leverage up a long position thats it. The risk you run is if the stock collapses it goes to $0. Take Google its $695/share today so $65,900 buys you 100 shares. If I wanted to lay out the same money and get more shares I could buy the 2018 $500 calls for $220/share thus for $220 x 300 shares Id lay out $66,000 for 300 shares vs 100 shares.

Being 220/share and the strike at $500, google needs to be over $720/share in january 2018 for me to breakeven. At that point every dollar over $720 ill make $300 per dollar vs $100 per dollar

Its a tremendous strategy but it has risks of $0. If I buy 100 shares of google today and its $495 in 2018 i still have $49,500 if I buy those calls I have $0.

If you buy leaps what you need to do is sell calls weekly vs your position to reduce your cost basis.
Posted by Iowa Golfer
Heaven
Member since Dec 2013
10234 posts
Posted on 6/29/16 at 10:03 pm to
Yes, to answer your question. It allows a long or short position for less capital outlay in its simplest form, and it allows a loss certain in each case. The loss certain is obviously much less than either buying, or short selling the underlying security, or commodity.

It allows a whole bunch of other things as well, but for the average investor, the above explanation is basically it.

Warren Buffett, who has publically said several times derivatives are bad, has interestingly enough also used leap puts extensively. He has hinted in one of his letters that there is opportunity in leaps due to market inefficiencies.

Purchasing a call or put, or leap call or leap put, is one of the safest, most conservative form of investing that there is, contrary to what others have written.

Bigfalla is talking above (loosely) about a bull call calendar spread above. I think what he is referring to is buying higher strike price leap calls, and selling calls monthly at an even higher strike. To oversimplify, the loss potential here is the difference between strike prices.

Selling naked, or partially naked calls is not something most would want to do unless they fully understood what they're doing.

Literally, and it might be too late now, there was leap call opportunity in oil (as a stock option USO) natural gag (as a stock option UNG) and silver (as a stock option SLV). The pricing models were way out of whack, and I traded all three.

So on oil as an example, rather than attempt to guess the bottom for Conco as an example, I went long leaps calls on USO.

Now those are three recent things that aligned perfectly for me. Meaning I thought it was a no brainer, and I follow all three commodities fairly closely.

The way I invest, trade if you want to call it that, might mean in my case, there might not be another opportunity like the above three for several years.
This post was edited on 6/29/16 at 10:05 pm
Posted by Hawkeye95
Member since Dec 2013
20293 posts
Posted on 6/30/16 at 12:11 am to
quote:

Read about them in the book The Big Short and seemed intriguing. Have done no further research so far. Anyone here ever buy one?


options are a great way for you to lose money quickly. if you dont know what you are doing, stay away from them.
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