Sunday, August 18, 2013

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

By Rihanna Jones


Although learning how to options trade is fairly simple, making money sometimes proves much harder for the beginner. Simply put, an option is the right to buy an asset for a set price in a set time frame. For instance, say you want to buy a TV. If that TV was part of the option markets, you could purchase the right to buy it at a future date for a set price by laying down, say, $100.

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.

Even though an option gives you a option to purchase or sell an asset, there's a third thing you can do. You can sell the actual option to a third party and give them the right to buy or sell that asset. Say the TV you had an option for breaks down. Then you can sell your option to a repairman, who can fix it and perhaps make a profit.

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 rush into options trading it is a good idea to start off by investing in shares and getting to know the markets. Maybe you have a particular sector you're interested in. If so, go and learn it while you invest in shares. Once you've made a little money and have a little knowledge, go into the option trading markets and use your profits.

Try to learn the basic terminology of the industry. Put all the terms and their meaning in a spreadsheet and print it out. As a start, you should know that a "call" is your option to purchase an asset at a set price within a set time, and a "put" means you have the right to sell an asset for a certain price within a certain time frame.

Learning how to options trade is actually fairly simple. Making money consistently in the long run is the hard part. Make sure you study and only get involved when you have experience of stocks and shares under your belt.




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