New to options? Check out our options introduction course: http://www.informedtrades.com/f115/ Practice trading options with a free options trading demo account: http://bit.ly/apextrader VIDEO NOTES Hello and welcome. In this video, we will take our first look at the option Greeks. You may remember from my videos on option pricing that there are only 5 inputs to the price of an option, or 6 if the option pays a dividend. The Strike price is fixed, but the price of the underlying stock, the volatility, and the time left until the option expires are constantly changing, and interest rates can change at any time. Option Greeks isolate these inputs and look at the change in option value when one or more of these inputs change. There are 5 main option Greeks- Delta, Gamma, Vega, Theta, and Rho, plus a bunch of others that are lessor known. Delta is the rate of change in an option's price when there is a change in the value of the underlying stock. Call Options have positive Delta, between 0 and 1. Put Options have a negative Delta between 0 and -1. When a stock changes price $1, one can think of the Delta as the percentage of the $1 that the option will change in value. For instance, if a Call Option that has a Delta of 0.5, and the underlying stock moves $1, then the value of the option will move 50 cents. A Delta of 1 means that the value of a Call Option is moving dollar for dollar with the underlying stock, and a Delta of 0 means that the value of the option does not move at all when the underlying stock changes value. Delta is the hedge ratio. A single option contract locks in a buy or sell price for 100 shares of stock. A Delta of 0.5 means that 50 shares of stock can be hedged with a single option contract. The Delta tells us how much the option will change in value when the price of the underlying stock changes. However, once the price of the underlying stock does change, the Delta changes as well. As the price of the stock moves up and down, the Delta also moves up and down. As an option gets further in-the-money, the option's Delta increases. As an option gets further out-of-the-money, the option's Delta decreases. The rate of change in the Delta when the price of the stock changes is known as Gamma. So the Delta shows how much the option will change in value when the stock changes value, and the Gamma shows how much the Delta will change when the stock changes value. In addition to the Delta changing, when the price of the underlying stock changes, the Gamma as well. The rate of change in Gamma when the price of the stock changes is known as Speed. Delta and Gamma also change over time as the option moves closer to expiration. As an in-the-money call option nears expiration, it will approach a Delta of 1.00, and as an In-the-money put option nears expiration, it will approach a Delta of -1.00. As out of the money Calls and Puts approach expiration, they will approach a Delta of 0. The change in the Delta over time is known as Charm or Delta Decay. Gamma also changes over time as the option moves closer to expiration. The change in the Gamma over time is known as Color or Gamma Decay. When an option nears expiration, Color may change quickly. ------ Vega is the rate of change in an option's price when there is a change in the volatility of the underlying stock. When volatility increases, then the cost of the option increases, and when volatility decreases, then the cost of the option decreases. The amount that the change in volatility affects an options price varies depending on the Strike Price. Changes in volatility have the most effect on an option's price when the option is at the money. In other words, volatility has the most effect when the Strike Price is the same as the current price of the stock. --- Theta is the rate of change in an options value when there is a change in the time left until the option expires. As the option moves closer and closer to expiring, there is less time left for the option to possibly move to where the option is profitable. This causes the option to lose value due to time decay. The rate of time decay on an option's value is not linear. As an option gets closer to expiring, time decay speeds up For instance, an option that expires in 9 months will lose just 10% of its value from time decay the first 3 months. The second 3 months that triples to losing 30% of its original value, and the final 3 months it loses 60%. --- Rho is the rate of change in the value of the option when interest rates change. Rho is the amount an option will change in value if there is a 1% change in the risk free rate. The most commonly used rate for the Risk Free Rate is the US 10 Year Treasury Rate. When there is a change in interest rates, it means there is a change in the time value of money. So that is a basic introduction to the option Greeks. In the next video, we will continue looking at Delta. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching.
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