What You Need to Know About Open Interest

The term open interest means an entire count of all option contracts that might be valid in the forms of stock, expiration, and even the strike price. The more open interests there are, the better. This means that there is more to the value and there are more liquid assets available to the said interest.

Sometimes a trade presents itself when a dividend increase has just been announced. Often that can be a good time to buy shares and then sell an in the money call option against those shares. The newly increased dividend will act as a floor on the stock most of the time, and it may take a few days for analysts to issue upgrades now that the stock pays a higher yield. In addition, if you set the expiration date of the option you sell to something after the ex-dividend date then you will receive the dividend in addition to the call premium.

The only gotcha here is early exercise. If the ex-dividend date is very near the option expiration date then when that day comes around it is possible the option holder will exercise in order to capture the dividend. This typically only happens when the amount of time premium remaining in the option is very small (or zero). The option holder will forfeit any remaining time premium when he exercises.

While this might all seem confusing, the one thing to keep in mind is that you don't want to put all of your eggs into one basket. You need to think outside the box, make sure that you know what all of your options are, and then choose which open interest opportunities you might want to take advantage of. Don't be shy because that will never get you anywhere. You are going to have to make some moves if you want them to pay off in the long run for you. Time is money and the time is now.

Finding a reliable option screener on the Internet can be a challenge too, but it is not impossible. This is extremely important to remember because you can't simply have given up on it all. Some people just feel so lucky because they came across some excellent resources that told them everything that they needed to know about the topic. Once this light was shed on them, they were then able to find better solutions such as an online option screener. Some still have problems finding investments they need once in a while, but for the most part being able to handle call covers is becoming easier as time goes on. There is no reason to worry about how you are going to go about getting the job done as long as you have the right resources on your side.