Читать книгу Wall Street Potholes - Simon А. Lack - Страница 13

Recently, I was asked by a new client to evaluate an IRA that was being managed by his former advisor. It included a selection of dividend-paying stocks combined with some options positions. Many people like what are called “covered call” strategies, in which they write call options on stocks they already own with a strike price above current market levels. It's often described as a way to generate additional income through earning option premium, and if the stock that's owned does get called away well, it'll be at a price at which you were in any case happy to sell.

There are a couple of problems with this. One is that if you own XYZ stock and you write a call option against it, you have created the exact same position as if you had simply sold a put option. It's called “put-call conversion.” Like a mathematical equation, the profit/loss on your covered call trade can be shown to be identical to that of a simple, short put option with the same strike price and expiry as the call option. Although a covered call strategy doesn't sound that risky, many people would find shorting put options to be very risky. You've got all the downside associated with owning the stock, and have only limited upside. I've run interest rate options trading in the past, ranging from plain vanilla to complex and exotic options. Exploiting put–call conversions to manage risk was one of the basic elements in our toolkit, and this remains so for today's options traders.