Saturday, August 24, 2013

How To Options Trade: A Route To Wise Investing For The Novice

By Rihanna Jones


If you're learning how to options trade for the first time then you'll need a step by step guide to investing. An option is deemed as the right to purchase or to sell assets now or at some point in the future. Say you wanted to buy a television from a friend. You could tell them that you'll pay them $100 now for the option to buy the TV within the next month for a set price, say $1,000. If you don't buy it within that month they'll get to keep the $100 and your option to buy the TV expires, so it can be sold to someone else.

Option trading has been in existence for a long time. The basic premise is that the investor hopes the asset they have the option to buy will appreciate in value. That's why it's important to make sure you have a little knowledge in the markets. Buying random options is most certainly as recipe to lose money. The good news is that it gets easier over time.

Taking the TV as an example, say it's actually quite a valuable TV set, worth $2,000, then they have to sell it to you for $1,000 because the option you bought is legally binding. That means you'll make a healthy profit by buying it and selling it on. However, if the set breaks then you will not want to buy it, so you'll lose your $100.

Although an option gives you the ability to buy or sell an asset at a fixed price, there is another thing you can do with them. You can sell the option itself. Say the TV you wished to acquire broke down, you can sell the option to a repair shop. You will hopefully not lose out and maybe they can fix it and make money on the deal.

Trading is very easy to do but not easy to make money from on a consistent basis, at least not for the novice. Generally, it's shares that are trading, but commodities are also very popular. You can buy an option in cocoa, gold, silver, in fact almost any type of precious metal or food commodity. If you know these markets then you could stand to make a lot of money by predicting price trends.

Before you get started the best thing to do is to purchase shares and trade them first, so you get a feel of the process. Once you start making a little money this way then try trading options with your profits, then you'll be more confident. You have to remember that options are quite risky. You can lose everything if you make the wrong decision.

Brush up on the terminology used by option traders. You can do this by organizing the terminology in a spreadsheet and studying it. For example, a "call" is your right to purchase an asset for a certain price within a particular time frame. A "put" is the right to sell assets for a particular price within a particular time frame.

Try not to be overawed when you learn how to options trade. There are many things to learn but try to learn them step by step. Invest in the stock market first and use profits to enter the riskier option markets.




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