Consider a circumstance that today you only have $15K and no more to more to buy shares and that at some point before the options expire the SP is at $0.40 (or something above the option strike price). Then there are two possible scenarios:
SCENARIO 1:
Forget about the options and buy $15K worth of shares at $0.13 (~115,384 shares). When the SP gets to $0.40 you'll have $46,153 in equity.
SCENARIO 2
Participate in the SPP, buy $15K worth of shares at $0.13 (~115,384 shares) and get ~57,692 essentially free options striking at $0.20. When the SP gets to $0.40, you can sell 28,846 full shares to convert the options for a zero sum gain and you will end up having ~144230 full shares which is about $57692 in equity. This is more than $10K better off and I have not put in any more capital aside from my original $15K. This leveraging scenario gets even more powerful as the SP increases. Surely you can see here that options are increasing my returns on the same amount of initial capital investment?
Now I totally agree if you have bottomless pockets and can totally predict the future and you know the SP will be at $.040 before the strike price, then buying a bazillion shares today at 0.13 is better than striking options at 0.20. However most people don't have endless cash and cannot predict the future. The options are 1) essentially free, and 2) an option to leverage your current investment in the future by the means I described above.
Personally I barely have the $15k to participate at the moment. however I am going to scavenge food from bins to save money in order to get as many options as I can!
