You were amiably chatting with your travel agent, discussing another conventional cruise, or perhaps a repeat of last year's sojourn to Disney World, when he suddenly becomes quiet and thoughtful. The mood in the room turns first awkward and then slightly ominous. Eventually, he leans in, a conspiratorial glint in his eye. "You know," he says, his voice quiet. "If you're tired of the usual holiday doldrums, I have a suggestion for you..." He pauses theatrically, and then, his voice dripping with a sense of implied danger, whispers a dark invitation: "there's always...the exotic option."
Better leave the kids at home for that one.
In financial terms, "exotic options" refer to specific types of bets that can be made in the futures market.
In general, options provide people with the right, but not the obligation, to do something at some point in the future. You might acquire an option to buy stock in a month's time at $X a share, or to sell oil at $Y a barrel.
The plain, regular, decidedly-not-exotic types of these bets are known as "vanilla" options. The most common varieties are calls and puts.
Calls allow the buyer to purchase a certain asset, like a stock or a commodity, at a certain price at a certain point of time. Like, a call option to buy 100 shares of Apple at $190 a share a month from now.
A put is the opposite bet, giving the option to sell a stock (or whatever asset) at a certain price at certain point in time. Like a put for the sale of 200 barrels of oil at $72 a barrel.
Exotic options are the ones that get weird. Because the definition is basically "non-standard option," the category includes pretty much anything that's off the beaten track. Sometimes financial firms create options to order for particular clients. Sometimes, exotic options consist of a combination of other options (say, a call at one strike price and a put at a different price).
Exotic options tend to be more complex, and tend to point to more specific scenarios. Not just "I'll make money if the stock goes up above $25," but something like "I'll make money if the stock rises above $25 but doesn't reach $30, with a hedge in place if the stock falls anywhere below $20."
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Finance: What is a Rights Offering?6 Views
finance a la shmoop what is a rights offering all right people think a right
to buy and buy at a discount kind of companies may be fearful of a hostile [Woman pointing at woman behind reception desk]
takeover or some other big bad event that harms them and they want to give
existing shareholders preferential treatment over external non shareholders [Shareholders at a night club]
this rights offering is essentially a hostile takeover defense so they might [Bear attacking rights offering]
say ok pals for the next 60 days you have the right to buy an additional
share of our stock which is currently trading for 312 dollars each for $200 a [Man discussing company stock at presentation]
share and note the discount wink wink and you need to currently own 5 shares
for every one that you'll then buy sound like a plan well that is the company is [Man throws rights offering to woman]
offering those rights to buy at a discount and the shareholders can sell
those rights to other non shareholders for cash in essence is kind of a funky
one-time dividend that actually hurts both the would be external hostile [Metal anvil land on a bear]
takeover people but unfortunately also hurts the employees who have stock
options not actual shares so then they suffer the dilution of this rights [Anvil lands on employees]
offering with nothing to show for it yeah and you may ask is there such a
thing as a hostile take under mmm wondering about that [People protesting outside metal fence]
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