Now that Apple?s earnings announcement is behind us, it may be a good time to take another look at the technology giant.?With the volatility event over, you might be looking to?implement an option position.
Even though the company announced its earnings, there may still be some volatile action ahead as the market heads towards the holidays. ?Here are a few thoughts that should be considered on AAPL or any other position you may enter.
Learning to trade options offers a number of unique advantages to an option?trader, but perhaps the single most attractive characteristic is the ability to control risk rather precisely in many instances. Much of this advantage comes from the ability to control positions that are?similar to stock with far less capital outlay.
One particular form of risk control that is often dismissed among option traders is the time stop. Time stops take advantage of the time decay (theta)?and can?help control risk. It is important to?understand that this time decay is not linear by any means.
As a direct result, it may not be apparent the course the time?decay curve will follow. An option trader has to take into account that the option modeling software that most online brokers have is essential to plan the trade and decide the appropriate time at which to place a time stop. This of course is?dependent on how much risk the option trader is willing to take concede due to time decay as part of the whole risk element of the trade. Other risk factors include delta, gamma and theta just to name a few.
As an?example, consider the case of a?bullish position in AAPL?implemented by buying in-the-money December?105 calls. A trader could establish a position consisting of 10 long contracts with a position delta of?+700 for approximately $5,000 as I write this.
At the time of this writing, the stock is trading around $109; these?call options?are therefore $4 in-the-money. Let?s assume a trader analyzes the trade with an at-expiration P&(L) diagram and wants to exit the trade if AAPL is at or abelow $106 (where potential support is at) at expiration. The options expiration risk is $4,000 or more. However, if the option?trader takes the position that the expected or feared move will occur quickly?long before expiration?he could implement a time stop as well.
Using a stop to close the position if the stock gets to $106 at a point in time around halfway to expiration would reduce the risk significantly. Because the option would still have some time value, the trader could sell the option for a loss prior to expiration, therefore retaining some time value and?and the option having?a higher price. In this scenario, closing the position?prior to expiration helps the trader lose less when the stop triggers.?This is especially true if there?is a fair amount of time until expiration and time decay hasn?t totally eroded away the option premium.
As one can see, options offer a variety of ways to control risk. An option trader needs to learn several that match his or her risk/reward criteria and personality.