How can I figure out when I'll be able to write call options of a stock?
Call the CBOE, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange I've requested options on several IPOs in the past. You mainly have to convince them that there is a market for them (or they won't be inclined to provide liquidity). The CBOE could talk to the company in question to help convince them, or the CBOE will just tell you when the options will begin trading. Oh yeah, sometimes they'll ask you who you work for, just try to avoid that question, they don't like to talk to individual/retail investors. You can't know. It's not like every stock has options traded on it, so until you either see the options listed or a company announcement that option will trade on a certain date, there's no way to be sure.
I do this often and have never had a problem.  My broker is TD Ameritrade and they sent several emails (and even called and left a message) the week of expiry to remind me I had in the money options that would be expiring soon. Their policy is to automatically exercise all options that are at least $.01 in the money.  One email was vaguely worded, but it implied that they could liquidate other positions to raise money to exercise the options.  I would have called to clarify but I had no intention of exercising and knew I would sell them before expiry. In general though, much like with margin calls, you should avoid being in the position where the broker needs to (or can do) anything with your account. As a quick aside:  I can't think of a scenario where you wouldn't be able to sell your options, but you probably are aware of the huge spreads that exist for many illiquid options.  You'll be able to sell them, but if you're desperate, you may have to sell at the bid price, which can be significantly (25%?) lower than the ask.  I've found this to be common for options of even very liquid underlyings.  So personally, I find myself adjusting my limit price quite often near expiry.  If the quote is, say, 3.00-3.60, I'll try to sell with a limit of 3.40, and hope someone takes my offer.  If the price is not moving up and nobody is biting, move down to 3.30, 3.20, etc. In general you should definitely talk to your broker, like others have suggested.  You may be able to request that they sell the options and not attempt to exercise them at the expense of other positions you have. "There is no guarantee improvements will raise the appraised value.  You also don't want your property tax appraisal to go up if you can avoid it. Since you are talking on the order of $10k I'll assume you're only a few thousand dollars more from getting to 20%. That said, any schemes you might come up with like refinancing or second line of credit will probably cost more in fees than they are worth, unless you can get a much nicer interest rate. Figure out how long you plan to stay there, Evaluate your options (do nothing, principal reduction, refinance for 30, 15, or even an ARM) and figure out your bottom line by comparing everything in a spreadsheet One more thing: if you do pay a substantial amount of extra principal, you can ask the lender to ""rebalance"" which will correct the minimum monthly payment to your remaining term. This will likely incur a fee, but could be helpful in an emergency" "Simple answer: Breakeven is when the security being traded reaches a price equal to the cost of the option plus the option's strike price, assuming you choose to exercise it. So for example, if you paid $1.00 for,say, a call option with a strike price of $19.00, breakeven would be when the security itself reaches $20.00.  That being said, I can't imagine why you'd ""close out a position"" at the breakeven point.  You wouldn't make or lose money doing that, so it wouldn't be rational. Now, as the option approaches expiration, you may make adjustments to the position to reflect shifts in momentum of the stock.  So, if it looks as though the stock may not reach the option strike price, you could close out the position and take your lumps.  But if the stock has momentum that will carry it past the strike price by expiration, you may choose to augment your position with additional contracts, although this would obviously mean the new contracts would be priced higher, which raises your dollar cost basis, and this may not make much sense. Another option in this scenario is that if the stock is going to surpass strike price, it might be a good opportunity to buy additional calls with either later expiration dates or with higher strike prices, depending on how much higher you speculate the stock will climb.  I've managed to make some money doing this, buying options with strike prices just a dollar or two higher (or lower when playing puts), because the premiums were (in my opinion) underpriced to the potential peak of the stock by the expiration date.  Sometimes the new options were actually slightly cheaper than my original positions, so my dollar cost basis overall dropped somewhat, improving my profit percentages." "I have the same problem. The people above are right to an extent. You have to be more disciplined. But there is no reason why you can't get there in stages. If you try to do too much too fast you'll just give up. You need to find a system that removes some of the passive barriers affecting you.  You need to think what in particular is overwhelming you. For me it was sitting down at the end of the month to write it all down. Writing it all down at the end of the week or even each day didn't work either because it was too much and I had forgotten what stuff was. I'm like you.  The bank account is a record so why do I have to retype it or worse, hand write it out? Bleh. What I ended up doing was divide my expenses into four categories: food (to include all medical) shelter, transportation, spending -- with the first three being needs and the last being wants.  Eating out is spending. I have four checking accounts with four debit cards. I saved up some money. I put a paycheck's worth of money in each because I didn't know how much I spent each month in each category, but knew I didn't spend an entire paycheck in any one category per month. Voila.  No more work. At the store you just put things in the basket by category. At Target you pay for the food and toothpaste with the medical card and the DVD with the spending card. The cashiers don't care that you pay separately. And if you are buying so much crap that separating items by category is a problem, why the heck are you buying so much crap? At the end of the month you will now have a record of how much you spend on transportation, housing (electricity would be paid online from this account for example), medical and fun. That's all anyone needs to help you get started. You can then see if your housing is 35% or less (or whatever percentage you feel is right). The person trying to help the author above is right. A Target charge doesn't indicate whether you bought some oil for the car or cold medicine or a lock for the cabinet door that broke. But when you pay for each of these things under the right account, you do know how the money is allocated.  Doing it this way requires little discipline. Before you put the item in the basket, you just ask yourself, is this a want or a need (which is something you should be doing anyway). If it's a need, is it for my car, house, or body. The house is what I use if i can't figure it out (like paying for the renewal of my professional license).  that's it! You have to stand at the register for longer but so what.  If you are spending all your salary and you stop when you have no more money (assuming you've run through all of your savings, which you will soon if you don't change), then you have no more money to spend. So if you are honest when you put things in the basket(need vs want), you are going to run out of spending money real quick. Your spending money account will be empty but you will still have food money. Set your debit card up so that it denies your charge if you dont have enough money.  Once you realize how much you truly spend for needs in each category, yoy will only put that much in each account. Therefore, You can't use the house card to just ""borrow"" from it till next month. If you do, you won't be able to pay your bills. If you have so little discipline that you knowingly spend your bill money, then there is a deeper issue going on than just finding the right budgeting/cash flow system for you.  Something is seriously wrong and you need to seek professional help. When someone is trying to help you, the first step is to determine what category you are spending too much in. Then when you realize it's the house category, for example, you will need to figure out why you are spending so much in that category. A bank statement wont tell you that. So you can do what we did. On every receipt --before you walk out of the store-- write down what each purchase is on the receipt. Then you can hand over the receipts to whoever is helping you.  Most items are easily recognizable on the receipt so you wont have to write everything down.  you should be doing this for insurance purposes anyway.   Again, if your receipt is so blooming long that this is onerous, probably everything you just spent is not a need and maybe you need to turn right around and return stuff. Maybe you need to go to the store more often so there are only a few purchases on each receipt. Groceries are groceries.  You don't need to detail that out. For Ikea when you have to purchase pieces to a set, we get a separate receipts for each.  So the brackets and shelving for the bedroom will be on one receipt and the brackets and shelving for the other room will be on another receipt. Even at the store I cant figure out what all the little pieces are! But really, if you are making a decent enough salary, then you are probably spending too much on wants and are calling the items needs.  So really your problem is correctly identifying needs from wants. Define a NEED. YOU. Make up your own definition of need Dwell on it.  Let it become meaningful for you.  Oranges are a need. Chocolate is not (no, really it's not! Lol!).  So when you are putting the stuff in the basket, you dont even have to think about whether it's a need or not after a while.  Wants go in the child seat if at all possible (to keep the number of items smaller).  When you are ready to check out, add up the items roughly in the want pile. Ask yourself if you really want all that stuff. Then put some stuff back! At this point ask yourself is the 8 hours I will have to work to pay for this worth it? Am I really going to use it? Will using the item make me happy? Or is it the actual buying of the item that makes me feel powerful? Where will I put it? How much time will I need to maintain it? Then put some stuff back! Get some good goals, a kayaking trip or whatever. Ask yourself if the item is worth delaying the trip. How will I feel later? Will I have buyers remorse? If so, put it back! These are controls you can put into place that don't take a lot of discipline. Writing the items down on the receipt is a more advanced step you can take later.  If you are with friends, go first so that you can write down the items while they are checking out. If you are private and don't want to share your method with your friends, go to the bathroom and in the stall write it down while they wait. Writing the items on the receipt while in the store is sort of a trigger mechanism for remembering to do so.  That pulling out of the card triggers your memory to get out your pen or ask the cashier for one. The side benefit is catching someone using a cloned copy of your card.  In the medical account if you see an Exxon charge, you know it's not yours.  Also, while that one account is shut down, you have three others to rely on in the meantime.  My spouse hated fumbling for the right card. They all look the same. Color code your cards. We have blue cross blue shield so it feels natural to have the food/medical account with a blue sticker (just buy a little circle sticker and place it on the edge so half is on the front and half is on the back -- nowhere near the strip). I've never been given a hard time about it. Our car is red so the car card is red, etc.  If you think four cards is a lot to carry, ask yourself if you would rather carry four cards or keep track of every little thing?  Good luck. I know you will find a system that works for you if you keep trying." "In real life, you'd see spreads like AMZN 04/13/2017 910.00 C 4.90 +1.67 Bid: 4.75 Ask: 5.20 (with AMZN @ $897 right now) and the fill you'd get on the buy side would be closer to the ask. i.e. I'd offer $5.00 and hope that it filled.  Filling a $4 bid when ask is $8 isn't likely unless the stock blipped down enough for your price to fill.  Options are a lot like day trading, in most cases. Most members here will agree that day trading isn't investing, it's gambling. Long term, the S&P has been up 10%/yr. But any given day, the noise of the market is a 50/50 zero sum game. Most long term stock 'investors' do well. Those who get in and out, not so much.  There are aspects to options that are appealing. As you've seen, the return can be high, even IRL, but your loss can be 100% as well. Let me share with you a blurred line - I wrote ""Betting on Apple at 9 to 2"" in which I described an option strategy that ran 2 years and would return $10,000 on a $2200 bet. A similar bet that ended a year ago yielded a 100% loss. I don't post there very often, as I keep that trading to a minimum.  There are warnings for those who want to start trading options -" "Writing options means ""selling"" options and ""put"" options are contracts to sell a defined security (the underlying), at a specific date (expiration date) and at a specific price (strike price). So, writing put options simply mean selling to others contracts to sell. Your profit is limited to the premium but your loss may be unlimited in a falling market." "In general there are two types of futures contract, a put and call.  Both contract types have both common sides of a transaction, a buyer and a seller.  You can sell a put contract, or sell a call contract also; you're just taking the other side of the agreement.  If you're selling it would commonly be called a ""sell to open"" meaning you're opening your position by selling a contract which is different from simply selling an option that you currently own to close your position. A put contract gives the buyer the right to sell shares (or some asset/commodity) for a specified price on a specified date; the buyer of the contract gets to put the shares on someone else.   A call contract gives the buyer the right to buy shares (or some asset/commodity) for a specified price on a specified date; the buyer of the contract gets to call on someone for shares. ""American"" options contracts allow the buyer can exercise their rights under the contract on or before the expiration date; while ""European"" type contracts can only be exercised on the expiration date. To address your example.  Typically for stock an option contract involves 100 shares of a stock.  The value of these contracts fluctuates the same way other assets do.  Typically retail investors don't actually exercise their contracts, they just close a profitable position before the exercise deadline, and let unprofitable positions expire worthless.  If you were to buy a single call contract with an exercise price of $100 with a maturity date of August 1 for $1 per share, the contract will have cost you $100.  Let's say on August 1 the underlying shares are now available for $110 per share.  You have two options: Option 1: On August 1, you can exercise your contract to buy 100 shares for $100 per share.  You would exercise for $10,000 ($100 times 100 shares), then sell the shares for $10 profit per share; less the cost of the contract and transaction costs. Option 2: Your contract is now worth something closer to $10 per share, up from $1 per share when you bought it.  You can just sell your contract without ever exercising it to someone with an account large enough to exercise and/or an actual desire to receive the asset or commodity." "In summary: In long form: Spreads and shorts are not allowed in cash accounts, except for covered options. Brokers will allow clients to roll option positions in a single transaction, which look like spreads, but these are not actually ""sell to open"" transactions. ""Sell to open"" is forbidden in cash accounts. Short positions from closing the long half of a covered trade are verboten. Day-trading is allowed in both margin and cash accounts. However, ""pattern day-trading"" only applies to margin accounts, and requires a minimum account balance of $25,000. Cash accounts are free to buy and sell the same security on the same day over and over, provided that there is sufficient buying power to pay for opening a new position. Since proceeds are held for both stock and option sales in a cash account, that means buying power available at the start of the day will drop with each purchase and not rise again until settlement. Unsettled funds are available immediately within margin accounts, without restriction. In cash accounts, using unsettled funds to purchase securities will require you to hold the new position until funds settle -- otherwise your account will be blocked for ""free-riding"". Legally, you can buy securities in a cash account without available cash on deposit with the broker, but most brokers don't allow this, and some will aggressively liquidate any position that you are somehow able to enter for which you didn't have available cash already on deposit. In a margin account, margin can help gloss over the few days between purchase and deposit, allowing you to be somewhat more aggressive in investing funds. A margin account will allow you to make an investment if you feel the opportunity is right before requiring you to deposit the funds. See a great opportunity? With sufficient margin, you can open the trade immediately and then run to the bank to deposit funds, rather than being stuck waiting for funds to be credited to your account. Margin accounts might show up on your credit report. The possibility of losing more than you invested, having positions liquidated when you least expect it, your broker doing possibly stupid things in order to close out an over-margined account, and other consequences are all very serious risks of margin accounts. Although you mentioned awareness of this issue, any answer is not complete with mentioning those risks."