Optionsguys, a question. I (probably) mentioned somewhere in this thread that I studied for the 7, but never took it, about 20 years ago. As such, I have a vague memory of all the mechanics of options trading, but not a firm grasp on it. Rest assured, I'm not making any trades until I read more, but I just want to see what I remember. So, here's the first question. Buying calls is pretty straightforward from what I recall. You pay a premium to reserve the option to buy stock at a certain price. If the stock goes up, I'm going to sell the call for a profit prior to expiration. (Side question - any of you ever actually exercise long calls?) If any of this is wrong, please chime in.
My question revolves around selling naked calls. I'll provide an example...
TSLA is currently trading at $340. Feb 02 calls with a strike price of $450 are trading at $.06 right now. So, if I were to (example, I'm not doing this) sell 100 contracts, I would be paid a $600 premium. Now, we have a week to expiration. The odds of TSLA going to $450 in a week are remote. So, as I see it, these are the two possible scenarios.
1) TSLA remains below $450 for the next week. The call option that I sold expires worthless and I keep $600.
2) TSLA shoots up to, say, $460. I'm now obligated to buy 10,000 shares of TSLA at $460 and sell them at $450. So, I would lose $10 a share x 10,000 shares, so I'd be out $100,000.
Am I missing anything here? So, the net result is that I'm being paid $600 to carry the .01% risk (generous) of being out $100,000? Would a brokerage even permit someone to make such a trade without sufficient assets on the books to cover that enormous potential loss? Seeing as you can't really put a $ figure on the downside (assuming I'm not way off base here) - how does a trade like this get insured by the brokerage and why would they even let me do it?