Assignable Contract

  

Categories: Derivatives, Investing

Think: The contract IS the option. The investments you make in the futures market are actually contracts. You aren't buying an asset outright, like what happens in the stock market when you buy a share of some company. Instead, in futures trading, someone has given you the right to either buy or sell a set amount of some asset (shares of stock or barrels of oil or whatever) at a certain set price by a certain date.
An assignable contract allows you to transfer the contract to the third party (or to put it another way, you can assign it to someone else). This allows you to sell the contract to someone else if it becomes more valuable, rather than waiting to complete the transaction yourself. Not all futures contracts are assignable, however.
Assignable contracts are like making a bet on the Kentucky Derby, seeing your horse get out to a big lead, and then selling your betting slip to someone else while the race is still being run. You are eliminating the risk that your horse might trip and end up losing the race. You are also eliminating the hassle involved with cashing in the winning bet if the horse ends up winning.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What Is a Put Option?83 Views

00:00

finance a la shmoop what is a put option? hot potato hot potato

00:07

ow ow! yeah remember that game well nobody wanted the potato, poor thing. the

00:11

players wanted to put it in someone else's hands. well put options kind [glue put around a flaming potato]

00:18

of work the same way. a put option is the right or option or choice to sell a

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stock or a bond at a given price to someone by a certain end date.

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all right example time. you bought netflix stock at the IPO a zillion years

00:37

ago at $1 a share. that's you know splits adjusted. all right now it's a hundred

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bucks a share. if you sell it you pay taxes on a gain of 99 dollars a share. in

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California that would be a tax of something like almost 40 bucks. well the

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stock was a hundred but you keep only something like 60. feels totally unfair.

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right so you really don't want to sell your stock but you're nervous about the [graph shown]

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next few months that Netflix will crater for a while and go down ten

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maybe twenty dollars. longer term though you think it'll hit 300. so this is the

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perfect setup to maybe look at buying some put options on Netflix. if the stock

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goes down your put options go up. with Netflix volatile but at a hundred bucks

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a share ,you look up the price of an $80 strike price put option expiring in

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December, and you know that's mid-september now .for five bucks a share

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you can protect your stock for the next few months .think about it like temporary [stocks placed in vault]

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term life insurance. you pay the five dollars a share in the stock goes down

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to 82 by mid December, worst of all worlds. well not only did you lose the $5

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a share but your stock has lost $18 in value. but had Netflix really cratered

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and gone to say $60 a share well you would have exercised your put and sold

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your shares at 80 bucks. well those put options you paid $5 for

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would be been worth 15 bucks a share. in buying that put option you've [equation shown]

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guaranteed that your loss will be no more than a $75 value for your Netflix

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position at least for that time period and ignoring taxes. well remember that

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options expire after December whatever like the third Friday of the month it's

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usually when options expire, you then have no protection and your shares float

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along naked. naked? really who knew accounting could get so [paper put option goes "skinny dipping".]

02:36

raunchy. yeah well that's naked put options.

02:40

that's what they really are people.

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