Fugit

  

Some words are just fun to say. Some words look like they might be slang for certain expletive expressions. And some words, like fugit, are both.

Fugit is a calculation made by investors when they’re trying to figure out whether or not to exercise an option early. When we buy options, they have an expiration date; once that date comes, we’re committed to whatever call or put we’ve purchased. Some folks get itchy about commitment, so they’ll do some figuring to decide if it would be beneficial to exercise an option before its expiration date. They use binomial trees to get specific about the if’s and when’s.

Spoiler alert: it’s usually not beneficial to exercise options early. Really, the only time it works out is if the strike price is way higher (if we’ve got a put option) or way lower (if we’ve got a call option) than the market price of the security. “Fugit” comes from the Latin “tempus fugit,” which translates to “time flies.”

We see what they did there (if we want to exercise options early, we’ve only got so much time to do it in), but most of the time, it’s usually a better financial idea to fugit and forget it.

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Finance: What are stock options in 90 se...0 Views

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Finance allah shmoop what are stock options in ninety seconds

00:05

or less Here's a stock ibm not the tech company

00:11

This one makes an anti constipation drug It's trading at

00:14

one hundred eighty bucks a share Okay so here's an

00:16

option of buy a share of ibm anytime in roughly

00:19

the next three months For one hundred ninety dollars a

00:21

share it's called a call option If you really believe

00:24

the ibm will go to say two hundred dollars a

00:26

share in the next three months well you'd be what's

00:28

called ten dollars in the money then or then have

00:31

a stock option or call option with a strike price

00:34

of one hundred ninety dollars which would then have intrinsic

00:37

value of ten bucks a share On the other end

00:39

of the buy sell desk is the gal willing to

00:42

sell you that call option for three bucks Three bucks

00:45

a premium So gut check time Would you pay three

00:49

dollars for the right to buy a share if ibm

00:52

for ten dollars higher than where the stock's trading now

00:55

today Meaning that to break even in the next three

00:58

months the stock has to trade all the way up

01:00

from one hundred eighty dollars a share to one hundred

01:02

ninety three dollars a share jobs for you to get

01:04

your money back but it goes to two hundred two

01:06

share Well if you sell that option you'll have invested

01:09

three bucks a share for a net return of seven

01:11

bucks in just three months or less And yes we're

01:14

ignoring commissions and taxes here because well in problems like

01:17

this or just a in the book but three dollars

01:19

into seven only three months Yeah that's a great score

01:21

You'd have more than doubled your money And on an

01:24

annualized return basis that's over a nine hundred percent dish

01:27

return really good score but with a much more likely

01:30

case that you spend three bucks to buy the option

01:32

and it expires totally worthless And then you've lost your

01:35

entire investment in that option So that's a call option

01:38

It's evil twin is a put option So whereas a

01:41

call options the rightto by a security to set price

01:45

by a certain set date a put option is the

01:47

right to sell that option We'd go into more detail

01:49

here but we're promised ninety seconds

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