bmoochie said:
Help me understand the Strategy of buying ITM calls? I sold covered calls at $7.50 and understand why that makes sense but I don't quite follow the ITM call strategy?
you benefit from the movement in the share price without extremely high theta decay. These options have intrinsic value (share price - strike price) + extrinsic value (premium). So because I bought 20 may 2.5 call options at $2.01, that means that for every dollar WWR moves above $4.51, the option value will increase by AT LEAST the intrinsic value.
Playing it out hypothetically and assuming I hold WWR to expiration:
- WWR hits $5.50: my profit per contract will be $5.50 (current share price) - $2.5 (strike price) - $2.01 (cost of option) = $0.99. If you multiply that by the 20 contracts I bought, that would be a profit of $1,980 on a net total risk of $4040
- WWR closes at $4: my loss per contract will be $4 (share price) - $2.5 (strike price) - $2.01 (cost per option) = $0.51. Multiplying by 20, that's $1020 loss.
You have the option of selling the option or exercising the option to take the shares. So let's also do a third example, which is WWR goes to 10. I could then buy the shares at that point for $4.51 (strike + premium paid), which would be double the money. I could probably turn around at that point and sell the 7.5C for $3.50, which would either net me an additional $1 in profit, same as if it goes to $11 or would lower my cost basis to $3.51 if it closed at $7.50 or below.
You don’t trade for money, you trade for freedom.