Chart Chat, page-50

There is one CTM stock and 2 listed options.

Options give the buyer the right to pay an exercise fee which will then give them 1 share. This sounds silly (why not buy the share) but in reality this allows the buyer of options to leverage their initial money however there is a time limit to this option which is the risk side for the leverage (they can become worthless).

CTMOA have to be exercised before april 2017 and to exercise each option will cost 1cent. Currently the price is 1c so to buy a CTMOA and exercise it today would be worse than just buying the CTM shares. However if you believe the CTM price will go up, then buying a CTMOA option at say, 0.3c and the price is 1.6c in april, you've made 0.3 cents per exercise plus you only had to risk 30% of the total cost of the CTM equivalent shares to do so.

Similarly, CTMOB will cost 1c to exercise but the option is available much longer, sometime at the end of 2019 I believe, so thus the cost of CTMOB will be more. This is known as the 'time premium' which the market gives an option for having longer left before they are worthless.

The value of options is really in the leverage buy/sell though.

For instance, last year I bought 1million options for a share at 0.2cents per option, exercisable at 1.5cents and the stock was sitting at 0.9c. The options only cost me $2000 where as the initial shares would of cost me 9000 (well 2015 with brokerage). After 8months or so the share had risen to 1.8cents but the options were worth 1.0cents.. so while the shares would of been worth 18000 after the rise, the options I bought were worth 10,000, essentially giving me almost the same net gain in real dollars for just over 20% of the risk.

However the downside of options is similarly tough, if the share had of gone to 0.7c then my options may of been worthless and I had of lost the full 2000, where as the share never expires so people argue that you can wait until the price goes back up (not a great strategy IMO) but it's arguable.

The major risk that a lot of newer investors run into is that they see options at 0.2c and heads at 0.9c and they get greedy and put the full amount they would buy heads for (i.e. in my case, 9000) into the options. This then gives you massive upside, but similarly massive downside.

It's always better to limit your options losses to a small percentage of your portfolio, similarly with any high risk speculative stock.