Options price listings vary in appearance from site to site, but most will contain the following basic information. Here’s a breakdown of what they list and what it means.
Shown below is one line from such a chart:
GOOG
C Jun 400 27.80 27.90 27.85 .05 138 3
GOOG (above the line) indicates the company’s stock symbol, in this [...]

Why do options offer any advantage over trading stocks? They’re riskier, since they expire within a certain amount of time and their values are more complicated to assess.
Since they expire the investor has to make a choice within a relatively short time frame. (Even LEAPs - Long-term Equity AnticiPation Securities - are generally written for [...]

You often see the phrase ‘options and futures’, as if the two were financial Siamese twins. But, though similar, there are important differences the savvy investor should keep in mind.
Both are so-called derivatives, since they have no independent worth as an asset, but derive their value from the instrument they are related to. However, there [...]

There are more kinds of risk than there are investments, since every instrument carries several kinds. But risk isn’t inherently bad. Without it there’d be fewer opportunities for profit.
The fundamental risk, of course, is price uncertainty. No one knows for sure whether GOOG (the symbol for Google stock) will be higher tomorrow or lower.
Options, like [...]

There exist today an array of charts, patterns and statistical analyses large enough to please even a Medieval numerologist. Though it often looks and reads much like mathematical tea-leaf reading, most of the commonly used tools are based on serious empirical studies of the markets.
The best way to explain what technical analysis is may be [...]

Options trading can become very complicated very quickly. There are LEAPS (long-term contracts), choosers, barriers, compounds (exotics) and a host of technical parameters to measure volatility and predict price movements.
Thankfully, some of these complications can be simplified into a number of simpler trading strategies. Most revolve around using the fact that options have a contractually [...]

Stock and Bond trading strategies run the gamut from the simple ‘buy and hold forever’ to the most advanced use of technical analysis. Options trading has a similar spectrum.
Options are a contract conferring the right to buy (a call option) or sell (a put option) some underlying instrument, such as a stock or bond, at [...]

There are several basic trading strategies, but in order to execute any of them successfully an investor new to options will need to know some elementary concepts.
The most basic are the call and the put. Buying a call confers the right, but not the obligation, to buy at a pre-set price. Puts grant the buyer [...]

Risk isn’t inherently bad. Without it, there would be far fewer opportunities for profit. In particular, there would be no options market at all. No one would have to speculate on price direction or other factors, since risk always implies uncertainty about the future.
But risks come in different flavors and degrees. Let’s examine some trading [...]

Because the actual calculation, and sometimes even the discussions, of volatility involve some fearsome mathematics, novice options traders often forgo learning about it. Those traders are at a disadvantage compared to their more intrepid competitors. And unnecessarily so, since the concept is not only useful but simple to understand.
In essence, volatility is a measure of [...]