Options on Futures: A World of Potential Profit If youve ever studied a second language, you know how hard it can be. But once you learn, say, Spanish as a second language - learning Italian as a third would be much easier since both have common Latin roots. To get facility with Italian as a third language, you would need only to grasp minor changes in word forms and syntax. Well, the same could be said for learning options. (To learn the basics, read our Options Basics Tutorial .) For most people, learning about stock options is like learning to speak a new language, which requires wrestling with totally unfamiliar terms. But if you already have some experience with stock options, understanding the language of options on futures becomes easy. In fact, basic concepts such as delta , time value and strike price apply the same way to futures options as to stock options, except for slight variations in product specifications, essentially the only hurdle to get passed. In this article, we provide an introduction to the world of S&P 500 futures options that will reveal to you how easy it is to make the transition to options on futures (also known as commodity or futures options), where a world of potential profit awaits. Stock Index Options on Futures The first thing that probably throws a curve ball at you when initially approaching options on futures is that you may not be familiar with a futures contract, the underlying instrument upon which options on futures trade. Recall that for stock options, the underlying is the equity issue (e.g. IBM call options trade on IBM stock). Since most investors understand how to interpret stock prices, figuring out the underlying is easy. When learning futures options, on the other hand, traders new to any particular market (bonds, gold, soybeans, coffee or the S&Ps) need to get familiar not only with the option specifications but also with the product specifications of the underlying futures contract. These, however, are insignificant obstacles in todays online environment, which offers so much information just a click away. This article will hopefully interest you in exploring these exciting markets and new trading opportunities. (For more background knowledge, read Understanding Option Pricing .) S&P Options on Futures To illustrate how options on futures work, I will explain the basic characteristics of S&P 500 options on futures, which are the more popular in the world of futures options. Although these are cash- based futures options (i.e. they automatically settle in cash at expiration), the logic of S&P futures options, like all futures options, is the same as that of stock options. S&P 500 futures options, however, offer unique advantages; for example, they can allow you to trade with superior margin rules (known as SPAN margin ), which allow more efficient use of your trading capital. Perhaps the easiest way to begin getting a feel for options on futures is simply to look at a quotes table of the prices of S&P 500 futures and the prices of the corresponding options on futures. Essentially, the principle of the pricing of S&P futures is the same as that of the price behavior of any stock. You want to buy low and sell high. In other words, if the S&P futures rise, the value of the contract rises and vice versa if the price of S&P futures fall. Important Differences and Characteristics There is, however, a key difference between futures and stock options. A $1 change in a stock option is equivalent to $1 (per share), which is uniform for all stocks. With S&P futures, a $1 change in price is worth $250 (per contract), and this is not uniform for all futures and futures options markets. While there are other issues to get familiar with - such as the fair value of S&P futures and the premium on the futures contract - these related concepts are insignificant in practice and for what you need to understand for most option strategies. Aside from the distinction of price specification, there are some other important characteristics of S&P options that are important. Since these options trade on the underlying futures, the level of S&P futures, not the S&P 500 stock index, is the key factor affecting prices of options on S&P futures. Volatility and time-value decay also play their part, just like they affect a stock option.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 09:40:43 +0000