Facebook Trade Follow-Up

[OlmsteadOptions 10]

For those of you who have been following the Facebook (FB) trade that was proposed in my blog entry of 8/15/12, the residual option position is now showing a profit of 76%. Since the residual position includes the long Jan 16 call that will be expiring this Friday (1/18/13), a decision needs to be made. The basic choices are: (i) sell the Jan 16 call and collect the profit, (ii) exercise the call to become the owner of 100 shares of FB stock at a price of $16 per share. (iii) roll the Jan 16 call into a later month.

 

If you wish to continue participating in the price movement of FB, choice (iii) provides that opportunity without the need for extra capital to purchase the stock. Even after choosing (iii), there are further selections to be made in terms of which expiration month and which strike price should be used.

 

Rolling the Jan 16 call into a June call option will provide for another five months of participation in the FB price movement. Here are a couple of possibilities involving June options : (iii-a) Roll the Jan 16 call into the Jun 17 call for a small profit that will cover your commission costs. The Jun 17 call has a delta of 0.96, which means that this option will capture essentially all of the price movement of the stock. (iii-b) Roll the Jan 16 call into the Jun 23 call, which will produce enough profit to cover the cost of your Jan 16 call and thus represents a free trade for the next five months. The Jun 23 call has a delta of 0.83, which will also mimic the price movement of the stock quite well.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Olmstead can be found at http://www.olmsteadoptions.com, an on-line options trading site, centered around options education material and option trading strategies he’s developed. He is Professor of Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University, author of the popular and highly-praised options book, Options for the Beginner and Beyond (2006) and former chief strategist for The Options Professor on-line newsletter, distributed by Zacks.com and Forbes.com.